


i don't have a choice (i'd still choose you)

by the_pretzel



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-01-22 13:06:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12482276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_pretzel/pseuds/the_pretzel
Summary: In which the most complicated thing in a universe full of soulmates is not having one.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Poison and Wine by The Civil Wars.

Armin is five years old when he finds out about the names.

It happens like this: He and Eren are sitting together on the floor of his bedroom, hunched over one of his books about the outside world, when Eren suddenly makes a high, keening noise of pain. When Armin turns towards him in confusion, his body is curled protectively over his right arm and his face is contorted into a pained grimace.

Armin freezes for a moment as his mind races, trying to understand what’s happening, trying to find a reason- he has never heard Eren make a noise like that, not even when he was getting beaten up by older and stronger boys on Armin’s behalf- and then he is up and screaming for his grandfather, for help. But Eren is already uncurling, staring down at his wrist, where dark letters now curve across his green-blue veins. _Mikasa Ackerman_ , Armin reads, though the words mean nothing to him yet.

“What does it mean?” Eren asks, shoving his arm towards Armin.

“It’s a name,” Armin answers, hesitant, because he knows just enough to understand that this is not the answer Eren needs.

His grandfather stumbles into the room swearing, just a little too late.

* * *

The name belongs to Eren’s soulmate, Carla explains to them later, after Armin’s grandfather takes one look at Eren’s wrist and bundles them up and off to her. Everyone has one, a person who is meant for them alone, who will love them more than anyone else could hope to. Their name will appear on a person’s wrist any time from the day they turn five to the day they turn ten, so that they can find each other, wherever they are. No one knows why this happens, Carla says, only that when people find the person with their name on their wrist, they stay together all the rest of their lives.

“Does everyone get one?” Armin asks curiously. He peers at the neat, precise letters on Eren’s hand in fascination.

 _“Everyone.”_ Carla says firmly, but she pauses for just a second too long before answering.

Armin doesn’t notice. 

* * *

“Did Mother and Father have each other’s names?” he asks hesitantly. His grandfather starts, nearly dropping his teacup in surprise.

It’s mid-afternoon, and they’re sitting in the kitchen in a comfortable silence while Armin flips through a book without any real intent and his grandfather drinks copious amounts of tea. It’s been a few days since Eren received his name, and Armin has spent most of that time trying to build up enough courage to ask that question. It’s not that his grandfather dislikes talking about Armin’s parents, precisely. But Armin cannot deny that there is a distinct sense of awkwardness between the two of them whenever the subject comes up. His grandfather is a reticent sort of man, not given much to emotional conversations, and discussing his daughter and her husband is very difficult for him. Or so Armin suspects anyway. It’s difficult to infer anything when his grandfather gives him monosyllabic replies. Still, he barely remembers either of his parents in any detail and there are some days where he can feel even those scraps of memory slipping away.

Even if they aren’t really his own memories… even then, Armin can’t help but want to gather every last bit of information he can find and preserve them in his head, like some tangible way of proving to himself that they existed outside of his own head, that they were real people, with lives of their own. Which brings him to where he is now, perched uncertainly on a rickety wooden chair in his kitchen while his grandfather squints at him warily over his tea.

“You don’t have to answer or anything,” he adds uncomfortably as the silence stretches.

Then his grandfather sighs heavily, and leans back in his seat.

“No,” he says gruffly. “It’s alright, Armin. You’ve got a right to know.”

“Oh.” Armin shifts in his seat, clenching his hand into fists on his lap. “So… did they? Have each other’s names, I mean.”

“Well, yes.” His grandfather clears his throat. “Your mother got hers when she was seven. She was real pleased about it, if I can recall. Showed it off to all her friends. Wouldn’t stop talking about it for weeks, wondering what your father would be like, that sort of nonsense.”

One of Armin’s clearest memories of his mother is of her laugh. It was a little too loud to be entirely polite, but warm and sunny and genuine. She did talk a lot, or so he thinks. Maybe that was the kind of person she was- cheerful and talkative. Probably popular too, with a lot of friends, but maybe this is just Armin’s wishful thinking. Armin knows he looks like her, because everyone who’d ever known her has told him so, but he doesn’t think he inherited much of her personality. His laugh is like the rest of him. Awkward and short and sort of stilted. Maybe he takes after his father in that respect, but somehow he doesn’t think so.

“How’d they meet?” he asks.

“Right out of school she went to apprentice at that shop round the corner, you know, the jeweler’s?” His grandfather shrugs. “Your father worked at the factory nearby, as one of the engineers. Anyway, one day he was in a rush, I forget why, and he rammed straight into one of her display tables. While they were sorting out the mess she glanced at his wrist and well, that was that.”

“Huh,” Armin says. He doesn’t quite know what he feels about that part of the story. It seems awfully frightening, to just run into some stranger one day and have your whole life turned upside down.

“Anyway, that’s the story.” Armin’s grandfather picks up his teacup and drains it. “Need anything else, son?”

Armin shakes his head, his grandfather gets up to do the dishes, and before long the kitchen has settled once again into a comfortable silence.

* * *

After hearing his parents’ story, Armin starts noticing them everywhere. Hannes, for example, wears his proudly, bold letters splashed across half his arm. It’s visible even through the white fabric of the Garrison’s uniform, and only hides when Hannes puts on his jacket. His name is a thick, dark black, and he grins when Armin points it out.

“There are all sorts of superstitions about that sort of thing, you know,” he tells Armin. “All kinds of weird beliefs. My own mother took one look at my name and practically threw a party. They like to say the darker the letters, the more your soulmate loves you or something, you see.”

“That is kind of weird,” Eren agrees, scowling. Armin suspects his distaste has something to do with how faint Mikasa’s name is in comparison to Hannes’ wife’s but refrains from commenting.

“What other things do people believe?” he asks instead. Carla’s explanation had been woefully bereft of any mention of odd superstitions.

“Ah, lots of stuff.” Hannes waves a dismissive hand. “Most of its all rubbish but a lot of people still put a load of stock in it, you know? Like how people don’t want to talk about the outside world because they think it’ll bring the titans down on us.”

“Now that’s really stupid,” Eren says, scowl growing even larger at the mention of titans, and their conversation promptly gets derailed into yet another argument about whether or not people should be trying to go beyond the walls.

He would have forgotten about the names in entirety after that, but it is as though the world is going out of the way to remind him, especially when all the other children in Shiganshina begin to get theirs, one after another. Eren is the very first in their neighborhood, but one of the boys who regularly likes to corner him in alleyways and ridicule him gets his name three months later, and the ensuing drama is public enough that everyone on Armin’s street knows about it before the day is out. His soulmate turns out to be Ilsa Berger, another victim of his, a girl who was plump and shy and routinely bullied because of both those things. When he approached her, filled with an idiotic amount of confidence for someone about to ask out a girl he’d been nothing but cruel to for most of the time he’d known her, she’d responded by pushing him into the nearest canal. Armin is impressed by her guts but slightly disturbed by the attitude everyone else seems to hold towards the incident.

“She’ll accept him eventually,” remarks one of the women who regularly visits Carla in the afternoons to sip tea in the kitchen and gossip. Armin and Eren are reading outside his house, but the words drift through the open window, clear as a bell.

“The names always bring people together,” someone else says with a hum of agreement. “There’s no fighting it.”

This is new information, and kind of disturbing, frankly. Armin had understood theoretically that people with names ended up together one way or another, but he’d never actually considered the implications before. Did that mean people had no choice but to love whoever had their name? His stomach squirmed at the thought. Then something even worse occurs to him. What if he never gets a name? What if there is no one out there for him? Will that mean no one will ever love him?

He shoves the thought away almost as soon as it appears. He’s never heard anything about people not getting their names, he tells himself sternly. There is no point thinking about this.

Eren tugs at his hand impatiently, gesturing at him to turn the page. Armin smiles at him in apology and turns his attention back to their book.

* * *

Armin has always been a pessimist, though, and now that he is paying attention it is almost impossible for him not to notice the things that the adults won’t speak of, and so, at two weeks after his sixth birthday, he discovers what happens if a person doesn’t get a name by the age of ten. 

The man in question is one of the Garrison, and Armin has known him for most of his life, really. He’s never had real opportunity to notice him before though. He’s short, brown-haired and solemn-faced, quiet with a tendency to hover in the background most of the time while Hannes and Eren tussle with each other loudly, so perhaps this is not a surprise. 

That changes the first time he sees one of the drunk Garrison members clap him on the back and sneer, ugly and twisted. 

“Johann here will sleep with anyone who gives him the chance, won’t he?” he announces to half the street. “After all, no one’s got a claim on him. So he’s gotta be pretty desperate y’know?

“Let go of me,” the man- Johann- says, quiet but intense. 

“Cut that out,” Hannes hisses sharply, jerking his head towards Eren and Armin. Eren is frowning, angling himself in front of Armin the way he always does when violence breaks out.

“Ah, sorry Hans,” the Garrison member slurs, blinking. Hans shoos Eren and Armin away, his smile tighter than usual, and neither of them protest for once. Armin glances over his shoulder at Johann though, and sees that his shoulders are pulled taught; his face is drawn and pale.

So that’s that, he thinks. 

He tries to put it out of his head, but the look on Johann’s face sticks with him, stubborn, even when he stays up nights trying to remember his mother’s smile or his father’s eyes. 

He can’t help but be angry about that, even when he’s not quite sure who he’s angry at. 

* * *

Armin is nine years old when he meets Mikasa Ackerman. It’s a little strange; hers is a name he’s known for half his life but he’s never had a face or a personality to match to it. He and Eren have often speculated upon what she would be like; have spent hours during lazy afternoons while they lounge around Armin’s room arguing about whether she is more likely to be tall or short, sweet or sarcastic, dark-haired or light.

He doesn’t think either of them ever expected her to be so quiet.

She’s so silent Armin actually doesn’t notice her in the room for the first few minutes, although to be fair it is the first time in nearly two weeks that he’s seen Eren again, the longest time they’ve been separated from one another since they became friends. The only thing Carla has told him is that Eren needs time to recover from an ordeal, which is worryingly vague information, readily used by Armin’s imagination to conjure up increasingly horrible scenarios for Eren to be subjected to. In any case, he has good reason to be distracted, especially since the first thing that he sees is Eren bouncing towards him, beaming and looking none the worse for the wear.

“Armin!” his friend exclaims happily, pulling him into a hug. Some vague animal part of Armin’s mind that he doesn’t even realize was tense abruptly relaxes at Eren’s smile.

Then he pulls back from the hug and gets a good look at Eren’s neck.

“What happened to you?” he asks in horror.  


The bruises aren’t so bad really. They’re yellowing, fading, almost healed in fact. But if they’d taken this long to heal, Armin can only imagine how bad they were in the beginning.

Eren makes a face.

“Nothing?” he says, more hesitant than Armin has ever seen him. He catches sight of Armin’s disbelieving expression and ducks his head, scowling. “Well, not nothing exactly. But I don’t really know how to explain it.”

“And,” he adds, his face pleading now. “A lot of it… didn’t really happen to me or anything. I just showed up at the end and stuff happened and. Well. Stuff.”

He waves a vague hand and looks past Armin as if for help, and it’s only then that Armin realizes that there’s someone else in the room with them.

The girl who is sitting curled in the chair in the corner is pale and skinny, with dark grey eyes that peer at him through hair that falls across her face. She has a red scarf wound around her neck, and one of her hands is buried in it as if she needs to make sure it’s still there.

“Oh,” Armin says in surprise, and takes a step back, nearly bumping into Eren as he does.

“That’s Mikasa,” Eren says, looking grateful for the change in conversation.

“ _Oh,_ ” Armin says again, this time in recognition. “Um… hello?”

He gets the slightest of nods in response, but the girl –Mikasa- stays silent.

“She doesn’t talk much,” Eren explains with a shrug. “She’s ok though.”

Armin is a little surprised by his ready acceptance. Eren is not always the easiest person to get along with. But maybe that’s because he has Mikasa’s name on his wrist. After all, in a way it’s like they’ve known each other for years. And his parents fell in love almost immediately, didn’t they? This is probably normal.

He rubs his own blank wrist compulsively against his pants. One more year. One more year and he’ll have a name of his own. He just has to be patient.

“My grandfather got me a new book a few days ago,” he says, eager to get back to some part of their usual conversation. Eren’s face lights up in response, and a sense of relief washes over him.

“You’ll let me see, right?” Eren demands happily, and Armin is quick to nod in agreement.

“Yes, of course,” he says, and the conversation devolves into their usual discussion about the world outside the walls.

All the same though, Armin feels the gaze of the girl in the corner the whole time, and he can’t quite shake the uneasy sensation that nothing in his life will ever be quite the same again.

* * *

He’s right, as it turns out.

Mikasa follows Eren everywhere, and her presence takes a lot of getting used to, especially since Armin and Eren have never truly had any other friends. And despite the fact that Armin has never even heard her voice, Mikasa’s presence has… well, presence. She might not speak much, but she gives off an aura that’s incredibly difficult to ignore or dismiss, and Armin can’t help but be aware of her at all times. He tries not to resent it, but he’s had Eren for so long, and Eren is really the only person his age that Armin has. 

And now Eren has someone else. Someone who seems wholly uninterested in Armin.

He isn’t surprised by her indifference- he has only had, after all, one friend in all his nine years, which tells him a lot about how other people perceive him, and Mikasa seems more than a little traumatized by whatever occurred when Eren was away- but he does find it more than a little awkward. After all, his bullies had never sought out his company to sit across from him in complete silence. Although if they ever found out how uncomfortable it made him, he wouldn’t put it past them not to try it out.

For a while, though, they settle into an odd equilibrium, with Eren and Armin doing their best to carry on as usual, and Mikasa being a constant reminder that things have changed whether they like it or not.

It’s foolish to be jealous, especially since Mikasa definitely needs Eren a lot more than he does, but Armin is just a little anyway.

That all changes on a day about a month after he meets her though, when he knocks on the door of Eren’s house, only for Carla to fling it open and tell him that Eren has gone out with his father for the afternoon, and that she doesn’t know when he’ll be back.

“Mikasa’s here though,” Carla tells him, cheerfully ushering him in. “Hold on, I’ll get her.”

She’s gone before Armin can protest, but he’s not really sure how he could explain to Carla that he and Mikasa aren’t friends, really, that their only real connection is Eren. He’s not even sure if he would explain it if he could- Carla is after all the closest thing to a mother that he’s ever known, and some part of him shrinks at the idea of disappointing her in any way.

In any case, Mikasa and he end up sitting together in Eren’s room, an awkward silence settling down between the two of them. Armin, perched on Eren’s bed, stares determinedly at a crack on the wall next to Mikasa’s head, who’s settled herself into the only chair in the room, a rickety old wooden thing that a grateful patient of Grisha’s had offered as a gift not long after Eren had been born. Armin can’t help but think glumly to himself that he probably knows the chair she’s sitting on better than he knows Mikasa herself.

He’s still racking his brain desperately for something to talk about when Mikasa shifts in her chair and, for the first time ever, speaks.

“You were,” she begins, and then coughs slightly. Her voice is a little hoarse, probably from the lack of use, but sweet underneath that. It’s a little incongruous on someone so solemn, honestly. “You were talking about the ocean. Before.”

Armin just stares at her for a second, genuinely surprised, and she shifts in her chair, her hands fidgeting in her lap.

She’s nervous, Armin thinks, with slowly dawning realization. Just as nervous as me.

He doesn’t know why it never occurred to him this might be the case. It makes sense after all. Armin’s life has changed, but Mikasa’s- Mikasa’s must be unrecognizable. He doesn’t know what happened to her parents, but it can’t have been anything good. All she has is Eren and his family as an anchor, and they were never part of her old life.

Of course she’s nervous having to make conversation with her soulmate’s best friend when all she probably wants is to be left alone with her grief.

Armin feels a stab of empathy so intense that it actually hurts, an ache that flares and fades in a single sharp instant. He understands, he wants to tell her all of a sudden. He knows a thing or two about missing parents too.

“Did you like it?” he asks carefully. There’s a long pause.

“I don’t know,” Mikasa says. She sounds lost. Confused.

“Do you maybe,” Armin hesitates, trying to find the right words. “I have a lot more books at home. You could come look at them if you want. And maybe you’ll find something you want to know more about?”

Grey eyes peer at him cautiously, assessing. Armin holds himself absolutely still under her gaze for a second. Then-

“Okay,” Mikasa says, carefully. She gets up and holds her hand out for him to take. Armin reaches his hand out and tentatively closes it around hers, and she pulls him up and out of his chair. Her grip is strong and sure.

“Lead the way,” she tells him, and, for the briefest of seconds, actually smiles. It’s one of the most beautiful things Armin has ever seen.

They don’t ever discuss it or anything, but from that day on, they are friends.

* * *

It is his tenth birthday, and it is the worst day of his life, at least until the day the Titans invade.

But Eren is all but baring his teeth at anyone who even glances at Armin, his whole body bristling with contained aggression, and Mikasa is hovering close in a protective sort of way she usually only utilizes around Eren when he’s picking a particularly stupid fight, and Armin knows he should pull himself together and ignore the glaring empty space on his arm, if only because he wants them to stop looking at him with so much worry in their eyes.

“It’s okay, really,” he tells them, struggling to summon up a smile.

Mikasa frowns. Eren glares.

“Really,” he insists. Neither of them look all that convinced.

It’s been like this since this morning, when he woke up and his wrist was as blank as it was the day before. Armin had kind of known not to hope by then of course- despite the endless number of stories he’d heard about children waking up on their tenth birthdays with a name on their arm, most children who had names got them way before they even reached nine years old. Some small part of him had wanted to believe though, and his chest had gone abruptly tight that morning, when he couldn’t deny it any longer. He didn’t have a soulmate.

His grandfather hadn’t said anything when Armin had brought it up tentatively during breakfast, but he’d rumpled his hair in a rough, affectionate sort of way. When he’d gone to Eren’s house, Carla had stopped her usual bustle over her household chores to lean down and hug him, very carefully, like he was something fragile. Even Grisha had given him a solemn nod and clapped him on the shoulder as he’d left Eren’s house for work, and Hannes had kicked his noisy squad members silent the second they started their usual teasing.

Armin had suggested the three of them go out of the city for the day just to escape the weight of everyone’s attention, but of course, even as they stroll across the grassy fields outside Shiganshina Eren and Mikasa have found ways to swoop around him like hawks protecting their chick all day.

It’s meant to be kind, and Armin wants to take it how it’s meant, but mostly he can’t stand their pity.

“I want you to stop,” he snaps, and it comes out harder and sharper than he meant it to but he can’t bring himself to regret it, wheeling around to glare at the two of them.

“Armin?” Eren says, confused. Mikasa straightens, her gaze on him steady.

“Just stop, okay?” he says again. “I already have everyone else treating me like there’s something wrong with me, I don’t need you two to do it too. I just want…”

He pauses then, struggling, trying to gather his thoughts. “I just want you to act normal,” he finishes, his voice plaintive.

There is a long and awkward pause, wherein Armin cannot bring himself to look at either of them.

“It’s not fair, though,” Eren says fiercely. “You should get someone who loves you. Everyone should love you. You’re a good person. You’re smart and you know all about the outside world. You deserve a soulmate.”

“He’s right,” Mikasa says firmly, her chin set in that stubborn way that means she’s readying herself for a fight.

There is a long pause, during which Armin finds himself suddenly in tears.

“I love you,” he blurts out.

The other two blink at him, faces identically blank and confused. It’s pretty funny, really, Armin thinks, and for the first time all day laughter bubbles up from inside him.

“I love you,” he says again, just because he likes the way the words sound. Just because everyone thinks he won’t every get the chance to say this to anyone, and they’re wrong. With friends like these, he could say it every day and it would always be true.

“…Weird,” Eren decides, but he slips his hand into Armin’s and tugs him further along the path, and Mikasa leans into Armin’s side as they walk, their shoulders brushing, her body warm against his side. They don’t speak much for the rest of the day, but then, they don’t need to.

* * *

In hindsight, Armin realizes, for all that his tenth birthday was terrible, he’d been spared the worst reactions to his not having a name.

He comes upon that epiphany not even a week after that day, in one of the narrow alleys that veer away from Shiganshina’s main canal, as he kneels in the dirt and clutches his side, struggling to take a full breath.

“It figures you wouldn’t have a name,” one of the boys standing above him sneers, pressing a foot between his shoulders and shoving. “Who’d want a weakling like you?”

Armin doesn’t have the strength to resist, and his face is pressed hard against the ground almost before he realises it. He doesn’t close his mouth in time, and so the dull taste of dirt mingles with the coppery blood flowing from where his teeth have cut open the inside of his cheek. He should fight back. It’s what Eren would do. What Mikasa would do. But this is a fight he can’t win, and so all he actually does is lift his head and meet their eyes head on.

That just gets him another kick to the head. This time the back of Armin’s head bounces of the wall behind him, and the whole world spins for a minute.

“Stop,” he croaks out. “Please.”

They’re not usually this violent; normally all he’d get were a few insults tossed his way and maybe a bruise or two if they were in a particularly bad mood. Armin wonders, dizzily, if they could somehow sense the weakness in him. It makes about as much sense as any other explanation.

“Stop,” he pleads again, and he really is pathetic, he thinks to himself viciously. They don’t listen, of course. He expected that.

“It’s not like anyone’s going to miss you, are they?” says a second boy, disdainful. “You don’t even have parents.”  


That stings more than Armin would like to admit.

“Better not to have parents than for them to regret having me,” he retorts anyway, because what else can he do?

It just earns him another kick. He expected that as well. He wishes that would make it hurt less. It never does.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Eren’s furious voice rings through the back alley, but rescue only makes Armin feel worse. He presses his face against the cool stone of the ground, wishing he could disappear.

“What does it look like we’re doing, moron?” the first boy snorts. Then there’s a sharp yelp, and even through his self-pity and pain, Armin smiles, because that means Mikasa’s here.

“Leave,” she says. That’s all she needs to say. The boys are gone, just like that.

“I wish I could do that,” Eren says grumpily. Armin laughs, and then winces in pain as his ribs protest. Mikasa presses a hand against his back.

“Breathe slow,” she tells him. Armin does as she says until the pain finally ebbs away, the sound of his own breathing harsh to his ears. “Don’t listen to them, Armin.”

“I don’t,” he tells her. “Why do you think they started hitting me?”

Mikasa makes a rueful noise in reply as Eren helps him to stand, taking care not to brush up against any of his injuries.

“Maybe we should see my dad?” Eren says worriedly.

“No,” Armin tells him, grimacing. “It’s just bruises. You turned up really quickly.”

He sees the look that passes between Eren and Mikasa at his words and rolls his eyes. “I promise. Nothing’s wrong.”

“Says you,” Eren grumbles, but he lets it go.

Mikasa doesn’t.

“You don’t deserve that,” she says. Her voice is always so absolute for someone so young. Armin sometimes wonders if she would sound that convincing no matter how ridiculous whatever she was saying was. He’s tempted to ask her to try sometimes; Mikasa’s sense of humour could be strange enough that she might find it amusing.

“They don’t know any better,” he says wearily, brushing down his clothes. “They’re just picking on me because they think it makes them strong.”

“I could educate them,” Mikasa mutters rebelliously. It makes Armin smile, finally.

“Don’t worry about it,” he tells her. “They don’t want to change their minds, so they won’t.”

“Assholes,” Eren declares, taking his hand. “Do you want to go back to my home? I think my dad brought home some new books you might like!”

“Your home it is,” Armin says, struggling to keep his smile in place as they turn away.

The rest of the day passes in relative peace, but Armin never quite forgets the feeling of that foot pressing him into the ground.

* * *

It is the worst day of his life.

Worse than the day his parents died. Worse than his tenth birthday, when he woke up and his wrist was bare. Armin is pretty sure there won’t be any beating this.

He, Eren, Mikasa and his grandfather are all packed into one of the ships currently making their way away from Shiganshina as fast as humanly possible. He can still see the city in the distance, and apart from the shattered gates which the Armored Titan had crushed as easily as a child knocking down a toy, the whole scene seems oddly idyllic. Almost normal, to be honest. Every time Armin’s read about war, about cities being conquered, the scene set was one of destruction. Buildings burning, children screaming, chaos taking over. But the only bit of smoke he can see now is actually steam, left over from when the Armored Titan disappeared, and the other people on the boat are deafeningly silent, apart from the odd stifled sob. It’s all so unbearably still.

Well, that almost makes sense, he thinks. What are they supposed to do? What can they do? What happens now?

He can’t think of any answers, so really, it’s no surprise that everyone else is so silent. There’s really nothing they can do apart from wait.

When the Colossal Titan had broken through the wall, Armin had thought it was the worst fear he could ever feel. But the uncertainty of the moment is just as terrifying in its own way, and Armin is somehow sure that there is just as much likelihood of dying in the next few months as there was trapped in the city as Titans poured in.

A sharp movement from in front of him drags him out of his thoughts, and Armin looks up to see Eren leaning his hands against the railing of the ship and staring back down the river, his face intense. Mikasa is next to him as always, but something about her face is drawn and pale in a way it hasn’t been since the first few days after her parents died.

Armin doesn’t know what to do about that. Armin doesn’t know what to do about anything.

He gets up though, and heads over to join them. It’s something to do at least. Maybe it’ll distract him from his uncertainty.

The three of them watch the city together in absolute silence until it disappears on the horizon.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jean actually shows up. Also, this goes pretty AU regarding Armin's backstory.

Despite the uncertainty of the moment, life really does move on. They reach Trost, a city Armin’s only ever read about before, and are moved into refugee camps that grow increasingly crowded as the weeks pass and more and more of Wall Maria’s refugees pour into the city. The three of them watch as the tension builds between the refugees and the guards, fights breaking out with increasing frequency. There’s nothing they can do, no matter what Eren insists. They’re just three children in a world going mad. There is nothing for them to do but survive.

And then, nearly a year after the Colossal Titan appeared, it’s announced that most of the refugees will be going on a suicide mission to try and retake Wall Maria.  
It comes down to names again, because of course it does. This time however, the names are being draw out of a lottery, and Armin has every reason to hope his name is not one of the ones called.

For once, he gets what he wants. It doesn’t mean anything at all though, because his grandfather’s name is called instead.

“No,” Armin says, clinging to his grandfather’s waist.

“Armin,” his grandfather replies, tugging gently at his arms. Armin hates him for the acceptance in his voice and tightens his arms stubbornly.

“No,” he says again. It’s the only word he can manage.

“Armin. It isn’t up to me, you know it isn’t-”

“Just stay with me,” he begs. “Please, _please_ -”

“Armin,” he says, so terribly gentle.

_“Please.”_

“It’s best this way,” his grandfather says. “I’ve lived a long life. Better me than a younger person. Better me than you, or even one of your friends-”

“No,” Armin wails.

“They’ll look after you. You’ll be safe,” Armin’s grandfather blinks solemnly down at him. “I was always going to die before you, Armin. I just want that for you before it happens. To be safe.”

“He will be.” Mikasa’s voice comes over his shoulder, and Armin startles. He hadn’t even realised Mikasa and Eren had followed him.

He’d seen the lottery announcements posted on all the notice boards and bolted directly towards the small corner of space he shared with his grandfather without a word. He supposes it wasn’t surprising that they had followed him.

“We’ll always look after Armin,” Mikasa raised her chin and gazed directly into his grandfather’s eyes. Her hand grips Armin’s shoulder, fisting itself in the material of his blue coat. “I always will.”

“I will too!” Eren’s eyes are fierce as always.

Armin’s grandfather actually manages a smile at this.

“I never doubted it for a second,” he says. “I’m counting on you both.”

“You don’t have to leave,” Armin says helplessly, fisting his hands in his grandfather’s threadbare coat. But in all honesty, he knows it’s hopeless at this point. If even Eren has given up what chance has he really got?

His grandfather just shakes his head and leans down to hug him, very gently. Armin can feel the frailty of his grandfather’s body when he hugs back and has to swallow hard when his mind insists on remembering the Titans and how incredibly, utterly terrifying they had been.

His grandfather is not coming back. He knows this. It doesn’t stop it from hurting when he leaves the next day in a group of refugees being herded like sheep by guards. It doesn’t stop it from hurting when weeks and then months go by without word from those sent out.

* * *

Five months after the day his grandfather is sent off to die, the survivors of the mission to retake the walls finally return.

There are barely a hundred of them to the thousands that set out. Armin hears the news when the Garrison guards watching the refugees as they work in the fields are called away to help deal with the commotion their return has caused.

He gathers with Eren, Mikasa and the rest of the refugees in Trost’s city square, crowds spilling out into the streets surrounding. They would normally have to worry about harassment- Trost is not fond of its newest citizens- but in such a large crowd all they need to do is stay away from the edges and keep a wary eye on things turning violent. There haven’t been any riots yet, but between the disdain of the Garrison troops and the resentment of Trost’s civilians Armin expects it will only be a matter of time. 

He watches as the survivors are led one by one into the square and their names are called out. Their shoulders are hunched, the eyes wide and staring off at nothing even as relieved family members run up to embrace them. Armin tries not to hope, knows just by looking at them that he shouldn’t, but he does anyway. 

His hope is wasted, as it usually is. Armin wishes he could be more prudent even as he scrubs his tears from his face. 

“I’m leaving,” he manages to say to Eren and Mikasa as he stumbles away.

“Armin, wait-” he thinks Mikasa says, but he leaves them and their concern behind in his haste.

The problem with having friends who know him as well as they know themselves is that sometimes even when Armin really needs it, he never actually gets time on his own. Still, when Eren and Mikasa find him in the alley he’s squirrelled himself away in with depressing ease he can’t help but feel comforted. Eren lets him bury himself into his shoulder, swearing to kill every Titan himself as he always does, and Mikasa hovers as she always does, eyes full of sorrow. This time though, when Eren swears to join the Survey Corps, Armin finds himself agreeing with him. Not because he wants revenge- joining the Survey Corps wouldn’t give him that anyway- but because he can’t think of a more useful way to vent his rage than to take it out on the Titans.

It’s never really been his dream to join the Survey Corps. Eren’s always seen them as his best chance to see the outside world, but Armin’s parents were more concerned with avoiding the danger, studying it, and Armin had always adopted their attitude almost as a side-effect of his exposure to them.

His parents are dead, though. Just like his grandfather. Just like too many citizens of Wall Maria to count. Maybe it makes sense to be a little bit bloodthirsty. Maybe that’s the only thing that will get them outside. Either way, Armin doesn’t want to leave his friends, not ever again.

As they walk back to the large building that houses all of Wall Maria’s refugees, thoughts of his family churn in his head, making him lag further and further behind until Eren and Mikasa notice and turn towards him in question. Armin pauses, pressing a hand to one of the rough walls of the street they’re standing in, thinking hard about what to say.

“I never want to talk about this again,” he says finally.

“Armin-” Mikasa says, stepping forward and gripping his hand, her forehead creased with worry.

“About my family,” he clarifies. “My parents, my grandfather. I don’t want to speak of them anymore. They’re dead. Just… let them be dead.”

He doesn’t know a better way to put what he’s feeling and judging from Mikasa’s face he doesn’t think he’s done a good job. She opens her mouth, probably to argue, but Armin cut her off.

" _Please,_ Mikasa,” he pleads, and she stops short at his tone. He looks at her, and then at Eren behind her, just as worried. “Not ever again, alright?”

It isn’t really a question and he knows they both know it. Mikasa starts to say something, unwilling to let it drop, but Eren takes her by the arm, shaking his head sharply, for once more sensitive about the situation than she is, and she falls silent and nods. Armin thinks wryly that it makes sense that Eren would understand anger of all things better than anyone else. 

“Let’s go to bed,” Eren says. “We have to work in the fields pretty early tomorrow.”

Armin follows them back to their sleeping rolls, but lays awake hours after they have both gone to sleep. He doesn’t come to any useful conclusions. 

* * *

His parents told him the world was a beautiful place. They thought that until the day they died, Armin knows this for a fact. 

The few memories he has of them are more impressions than anything else- they died when Armin was young- before he met Eren, so before the age of five, he’s sure- but Armin has pieced together information from his grandfather and Carla and anyone else who ever spoke about them to form a rough idea of what they were like. 

They believed in remembering what the outside world was like, both good and bad, his father had told him every day, as he built him worlds of cities so bright their light blocked out the stars, of oceans so mysterious that decades of research had barely begun to make sense of them. Half of all his best dreams were woven by his father first. 

His mother though, she had told him slightly different stories. Usually when she was tucking him in for the night. Strange stories. There’s one Armin remembers in detail. He’s curled and on his side, facing his mother. Staring into a face so like his own. It’s another thing he has in common with Eren and Mikasa, he’ll think to himself years later. They all have their mother’s faces. 

“There was once a kingdom which was ruled over by a most beloved prince,” his mother says. “It was a most bright and dazzling place, full of laughter and light. And the prince grew up loving this light, learning to depend on it as most of his people had.” 

“That’s nice,” murmurs Armin. He’s not really listening to what she’s saying so much as to the rhythm of her words; it’s been a long day and his eyes are half-shut. 

“It was nice.” she agrees. “For a long time. But then all the neighboring countries began warring amongst themselves, warring against his people. So the prince had to save them.” 

“What happened then?” asks Armin curiously. 

“Well, his people were starving. They were all out of weapons. They needed to get those from somewhere.” His mother shrugs. “And there was a country his people had conquered, years and years earlier, with exactly the resources they needed. As it happens.” 

Armin blinks, carefully. He has to admit, this hadn’t been the way he’d seen the story going. 

“And?” he asks quietly. 

“And so the prince took what he needed to keep his kingdom alive,” his mother says. “As the people of one country suffered, the people of another grew strong and safe and happy. And so there was peace in his kingdom, for a long time.” 

“But what happened to him?” Armin demands. “The prince? Wasn’t he punished?” 

“Punished?” his mother is genuinely puzzled. “Oh no, darling. That’s not what happens to princes.” 

“Why not?” Armin scowls. “That’s not a good ending.” 

“Decades later, after years of suffering, the people under his rule fought back and gained their independence,” his mother says, as though offering him a concession. “And then they were free, to make their own mistakes.” 

“That’s not fair,” Armin tells her. “That’s a lousy story.” 

“It is,” she says, quiet in a way she rarely is. “But that’s how life works. How people work. You should remember that, Armin.” 

“Life and people aren’t fair,” Armin is still cross. 

“No,” his mother tells him, a bleak expression on her face. “They certainly aren’t.” 

“It’s not like the stories Father tells me,” Armin points out. She pauses for a second, then shrugs. 

“Your father doesn’t want me to tell you these kinds of stories,” she tells him, her slim hand reaching up to smooth his hair away from his eyes. 

“Why?” Armin blinks up at her. 

“Because he loves you very much,” she says simply. 

“Oh.” Armin considers this. “How come you do then?” 

“Because I love you very much too.” She gazes at him. “Do you understand?” 

“No.” Armin says uncertainly. 

“You will,” she replies, cryptically and a little unnervingly. 

Armin squirms at that, starting to kick his feet out from under the covers in a sudden odd anxiety. 

His mother must sense his mood though, because she goes abruptly back to smiling and rumples his hair in a scolding way. “What do you think you’re doing? It’s bedtime!” 

She swoops down and covers his entire face in kisses, until he’s wriggling from laughter instead, and then tucks him in more firmly this time, sweeping out of the room with a final radiant smile aimed his way. 

No matter how strange that memory leaves him feeling, Armin remembers feeling safe first, and that means it’s a good one. So it goes for most of his memories of his parents. 

There is one memory though, that he does his best to forget. 

It’s remembered in vague impressions more than anything, but he’s gone over those impressions so many times they’ve solidified in his head somehow, become clear just from the number of time he’s retraced them. 

He is two, or three, or four. He doesn’t really know, and never managed to come up with the courage to ask his grandfather. 

He’s crouched down in the kitchen, under the table. He’s curled there for a reason he can’t really remember. The kitchen door is open, and though he’s fairly well hidden, he can hear and see everything going on in the living room, where his parents are speaking with increasing urgency to a number of people whose voices rise in tandem with theirs. He can’t remember what they talked about or, or the faces of the people they spoke to either, just the sound of those voices getting louder and louder. 

What he does remember, most clearly, is one of the men (A blurry-faced blob with brown hair) stepping forward, something shiny and metal in his hand. His father looks up and around and his gaze settles on him, widening with horror. He ducks his head slightly so his longish hair falls over his side of his face, blocking him from the view of the other men. He shakes his head at Armin as best he can. Even young as he is, Armin can recognize an order not to look. 

He ignores it, even when the man holding the metal object grips his father’s chin and yanks it towards him. There is more talking, but it doesn’t register. There is the sound of his mother’s steely silence, louder than any of the endless talking she’s known for. There is the sound of his father’s harsh breathing. 

And then there is a series of loud bangs, so loud Armin clamps his hands around his head and finally, finally looks away. When he looks up, all he sees is red. 

He crouches down on the kitchen floor for ages- he doesn’t know how long- before people come to investigate. His grandfather is the one who finds him under that table, he knows that much, remembers being pulled from under it and buried into a frail shaking shoulder that smelled just a little like his mother. 

Armin tells him he doesn’t remember what happened to his parents, and sees the relief on his grandfather’s face. This is the answer that people want, and it’s the one he gives over and over again, even to Eren. Even to Mikasa, because at that point he almost believes it’s true himself. What he doesn’t tell anyone is that he isn’t sorry for looking. Maybe he understands his mother, after all. 

Armin attends the funeral with his grandfather. People pet his hair sympathetically and tell him how brave he is for not crying but all he feels is numbness. Later he will sit on next to his grandfather, in a house in a different part of Shiganshina, and wait for it all to be over. When all the visitors have left and his grandfather finally tells him he can leave, he heads up into his new bedroom, large and empty and lonely, and curls up on his bed, pulling the covers up without even bothering to undress. He weeps into his pillow for hours, loss aching through him, resounding in his bones. 

He doesn’t believe, anymore. His parents would be disappointed in him, maybe even Eren would be disappointed in him, but the truth is that the day his parents die is the day he stops believing. 

The world might be a beautiful place. But the people in it are terrible. 

He likes to pretend his parents would understand. 

Armin finds it funny, sometimes, in a sick way which settles at the bottom of his stomach and infects him with its poison. The Titans have killed hundreds, probably even thousands. But the people responsible for his family’s deaths? All human. Every last one. 

He looks at purity of Eren’s rage sometimes and feels nothing but envy.

* * *

Time passes no matter what Armin’s feelings are, though, and almost before Armin feels ready he and his friends are old enough to go into military training. They’re a few out of hundreds of refugee children who’ve ended up joining at this point; it’s one of the few jobs wherein training is free, and Eren is hardly the only child from Wall Maria to dream of getting a little revenge on the Titians.  


Armin’s life is so busy at this point just with surviving and planning for the future that in all honesty he’s almost forgotten about the issue of soulmates. Once he and Eren and Mikasa are all surrounded by people their own age, however the topic becomes almost unavoidable. Armin is foolish enough to hope, at first, that the distraction of their training would prove great enough that the topic of names would eventually be worn out and forgotten. Unfortunately, his hopes are dashed the very first week they’re there. It’s better than waiting around, worrying that the other shoe was going to drop, but that’s little comfort.  


It happens like this: On the fourth day of training two recruits, Hannah and Franz are paired together and discover that they have each other’s names. By dinnertime, the story is all anyone is talking about, and the new couple is grinning shyly at each other while their friends tease them.  


Armin is very happy for them.  


Really.  


In any case, this starts everyone off discussing their own names, all while Armin sinks lower in his seat and does his best to will himself into invisibility. Normally he could rely on Eren and Mikasa to change the subject if someone’s attention turned towards him, but neither of them are there, having been corralled into helping Shadis put away the training equipment. There’s nothing for it but to try his best to detach himself from the conversation.  


It turns out to be a lousy decision, of course. That becomes evident a good fifteen minutes in.  


“I’ve got the name of a girl from Sina,” Jean Kirstein says, smugness in every line of his body as he rolls his sleeve up to show the rest of the trainees. “I’m pretty sure she’s from a noble house.”  


His wrist bears the name _Clara Beaumont,_ Armin notes, his curiosity forcing him to sneak a glance, and he’s right. Beaumont is the name of a noble house, and a fairly wealthy one at that. Lucky Jean.  


He doesn’t know much about Jean, except for the fact that he and Eren have taken a rather obvious dislike to one another, and that he has an equally obvious habit of staring at Mikasa whenever she happens to be in the room. But neither of those things are all that significant in themselves- Eren has a habit of picking fights left and right with anyone he deems wrong, and Mikasa is, well, beautiful and most people their age might have names, but teenagers are teenagers after all, and dating someone who's name isn't on your wrist isn't uncommon. Half the boys Armin knows have had a crush on her at some point. Armin still doesn’t really know if it’s amusing or incredibly sad that Eren hasn’t even seemed to notice, when his attention is the only one Mikasa ever really wants to attract. Most days, when he watches her face fall as Eren turns away in impatience, he leans towards sadness.  


“What about you, Armin?” Jean asks, plopping down in the seat across from him. “Whose name have you got?”  


“I-” Armin hunches his shoulders miserably.  


“It can’t be that bad,” Jean says, raising an eyebrow. “Show us, come on.”  


“I’d rather it remained private,” Armin says stiffly, and wishes himself invisible.  


“Come on, Armin,” Jean starts, but he has had enough.  


“I’d rather not compare names just so you can get an ego boost, Jean,” he snaps, and Jean’s face would be funny, if Armin wasn’t so miserable. His voice comes out too loud, and half the room is staring at him. His cheeks are burning as he shoves himself away from the table and stalks out, leaving his barely touched dinner behind.  


He heads to the dorm he shares with the other boys and buries himself under the covers. He stays awake for hours afterward, pretending to be asleep when the other boys come in.

* * *

After that Jean… well, Jean _watches_ him. No one else in the room brings up the incident to Armin again, probably because awkward teenagers who had just met were hardly about to ask him about it outright. Jean doesn’t either, but every now and then, Armin will find him, face set in an intent frown, staring at Armin as though determined to work him out. At first, Armin just determinedly ignores him in the hopes that it might get him to stop, but it doesn’t. Jean just keeps on staring in between lessons and training and- Armin just wants him to stop. He’s always been desperate for acknowledgement, but something about Jean’s frank appraisal makes him wary. 

It all comes to a head a few days later, when Jean sidles up to him after training. Armin’s not in a good mood to begin with- they’d just begun training on their 3DM training gear and Eren had somehow managed to put in a worse performance than Armin himself, which was worrying to say the least. He’s slumped on the stairs outside the boy’s cabin staring tiredly off into space, waiting for everyone else to come out for dinner. Jean approaching him was just the icing on the cake of a long, brutally exhausting day. 

“What?” he asks, bluntly, too tired to be polite. Jean doesn’t seem to take it as discouragement, possibly because he’s so blunt himself. Instead he just squares his shoulders, looks Armin in the eyes, and says- 

“I’m sorry.” 

“What?” Armin just blinks at him. 

Jean glares back. “I’m sorry, alright?” 

He says it fiercely, but Armin’s spent enough time with Eren to read the sincerity under the aggression. 

“You are,” he says. He doesn’t mean for it to be a question- it’s more of a blank statement of the obvious than anything- but Jean takes it as such. 

“Yeah,” he says, fidgeting a little. “I shouldn’t have pushed it, alright? Especially not in front of everyone like that. And Mikasa said afterwards-” 

“So this is about Mikasa.” Armin didn’t think he cared enough about Jean to be disappointed in him, but he is. “I should have known. I thought- well. Never mind what I thought, you-” 

“No,” Jean interrupts him, nearly tripping over himself. “No, I- I know I was an asshole, alright? I know and I’m sorry I hurt you. I am.” 

He trails off, face flushing red, but he meets Armin’s eyes squarely, determinedly, and Armin must have spent entirely too much time with Eren, because he can’t help but smile. 

“All right,” he says. “I believe you.” 

“Oh.” Jean shuffles his feet awkwardly. “Well. Good.” 

He makes a vague, jerky motion that approximates a nod towards Armin and hastily beats a retreat. Armin has enough empathy for him to wait until he is out of earshot before he starts snickering. 

* * *

The next time he has real cause to think about Jean Kirstein with any depth, it’s nearly three years later, and Connie has told him that Jean plans to join the Survey Corps. He doesn’t get much time to mull it over at the time, though- he’s just noticed that Annie is passing off Marco’s 3DMG gear as her own, and his mind is too preoccupied with what that means to pay any attention as to why a boy who’d never wasted a single opportunity to mock those who joined the Survey Corps as fools would suddenly choose to join them himself. 

He can’t help but ask why though, the next time he sees Jean. _Why_ has been bothering him, at the back of Armin’s head since he heard the news. The thing is, people don’t surprise Armin often. And for Jean Kirstein to do it, someone who’s been almost as straightforward as Eren- that surprises him more than anything. At least Annie had been secretive and reserved the entire time Armin’d known her. She’d kept her name covered with a handkerchief tied impossibly tight around her wrist, even during hand-to hand combat. Even Armin hadn’t bothered doing that, if only because it drew more attention to hide one’s name than it did to flaunt it. The only response she’d given when Eren had dared to ask was that she wasn’t entitled to give answers to anyone. Armin had rather respected her for it. 

Jean similarly, doesn’t give a particularly straight answer either when Connie questions him, but this time it only frustrates Armin more. 

“I’m not one of those people who would tell you to join the Survey Corps and fight the Titans no matter what or anything,” he’s telling Connie. “I just think… well, it’s a choice everyone has to make for themselves.” 

“So you don’t think I should join the Survey Corps?” Connie stares at him forlornly. He’s always been happier when he has someone to tell him what to do; Armin figured this out about him fairly early into training. Armin can’t blame him for it. 

Jean just sighs. “Make up your own mind.” 

“That’s not helpful,” Connie tells him glumly. Armin has an odd feeling Connie’s already -resigned- somehow and he just doesn’t know it yet. The ambiguity of the feeling frustrates him. Ever since Trost people had been strange, everyone had been different in ways Armin hadn’t always been able to predict and all of a sudden Armin just- snaps. 

“You don’t just get to change your mind,” he snarls, starting forward. He can practically feel all the eyes of his squad turn to him but he shoves the feeling aside, uncaring in the way only anger can incite. 

“Armin?” Sasha, next to him, starts forward in confusion. 

“The whole time we were in training you never cared whether the Titans would kill us all or not, and now you want to join the Survey Corps like you’re some kind of hero?” he says in disgust. 

“Armin, hey-” 

“All of a sudden you decide to care?” Armin’s voice is shaking and he doesn’t even understand why. 

_“Armin,”_ Jean says. It comes out frustrated and miserable. “What the hell do you want me to say?” 

“I don’t know!” Sasha and Connie and the rest of their squad are staring, Armin knows, but he can’t help it. “Just say something!” 

They just stare at each other like idiots for a minute, but then Commander Erwin’s voice calls them back towards reality, towards their graduation ceremony, and they all scramble to get in front of the stage. 

“Armin?” Mikasa asks uncertainly as they go. 

“It’s okay,” he tells her, but he still feels oddly shaken, and he sneaks a peak at Jean when the Commander finally asks them to make a choice. He fully expects him to break and leave, but Jean’s face is terrified but set, and though his body trembles with effort he doesn’t leave with the majority of the trainee corps. Armin’s impressed despite himself. His own limbs are still, but that’s nothing impressive. He’s known what his path would be for years now. Walking a completely different one... well, that would take a lot more strength. 

He avoids everyone after the ceremony, choosing to go back to the trainee camp and using his old trick of pretending to be asleep when everyone else comes in. He gets the feeling none of the boys buy it anymore, but they’re all of them either too polite or too awkward to confront him about it. Armin’s rather grateful. 

* * *

Unfortunately, it turns out that once he’s successfully avoided his friends and their well-meaning concern, he can’t actually get to sleep when he wants to.  


Insomnia is an old friend at this point between his nightmares and his brain’s tendency keep itself active no matter if Armin is trying to rest or not, but it’s particularly bad that night. Annie and Jean and Eren blur together in his head, and Armin can barely keep still in one position for more than a few seconds, much less long enough to fall asleep. If they were still in the refugee camps he would go and find Mikasa, who was also awake more often than not, but ever since they’ve joined the military they’ve both had to deal with this particular issue alone (Eren sleeps like a log, and always has, despite his tendency towards strange dreams).  


Eventually, he sighs and sits up, giving up on sleep for the night. This is the 104th trainee squad’s last night in their training camp- they’ll be heading to the headquarters of whatever branch of the military they’ve chosen to join in the morning- and Armin feels oddly nostalgic about it. It's a little ridiculous considering most of the people he’s close with are coming with him anyway, but he supposes nostalgia isn’t just for people, but for places and times too. He wonders though if he shouldn’t just be used to leaving homes behind at this point. This isn’t the first time he’s had to do it, and he has a grim feeling it won’t be the last.  


All in all, he’s in a pretty melancholic mood when he slips on his uniform and heads out the door. He wanders about the empty mess hall aimlessly for a while, walks a couple of rounds around their cabins, then heads past them to the woods where they train with their 3DMG.  


He’s lost in his own thoughts, so it takes him a moment to notice that there is something of a commotion emanating from the clearing in the woods where their training dummies are set up for the middle of the night. He draws closer, cautiously, frowning to himself as he notes the sound is that of blades cutting into wood, familiar to him as Shadis’ face. Still, there isn’t supposed to be anyone out there at this time of the night.  


Armin wrestles with himself for a second, taking stock of the people he’s most protective of- Eren is sleeping as soundly as ever, Mikasa has no reason to be out here that he knows of- and then decides that even if this doesn’t involve either of them, he is too curious to leave without figuring out who exactly is out there.  


He approaches hesitantly, sticking to the shadows. It turns out he needn’t have bothered, really. Jean Kirstein stands in the middle of the clearing, breathing heavily, hands shaking. The training dummies around him are decimated, chunks gouged out of them by the now-blunt blades he’s holding in his hands. He might not have noticed if Armin had come rampaging into the clearing on the back of a horse. Armin should rightly slip off into the darkness and ignore whatever’s going on with Jean. Unfortunately, he can’t help taking note of the wan complexion of Jean’s face, of the shadows under his eyes, and between that, Marco’s loss, and the fact that he’d taken his own temper out on him earlier for no deserving reason, something in him is stirred to pity.  


“Jean,” he calls, and the other boy starts and turns.  


“Armin.” It’s not particularly friendly. Armin doesn’t blame him. He thinks of Jean’s apology to him and decides abruptly to take inspiration from it, squaring his shoulders and looking him in the eye.  


“I’m sorry,” he says bluntly.  


There is a long pause.  


“You’re allowed to join whatever branch of the military you want,” he adds, because the silence is getting awkward. “You’re allowed to change your mind, too. I was just- upset- and I acted like an asshole to you.”  


Jean’s shoulders slump.  


“Yeah, well,” he mutters. “It’s not like you weren’t saying what everyone was thinking, you know? I know you think I’m a fucking hypocrite.”  


“That’s not true,” Armin insists, startled. Jean makes a dismissive noise, turning away from him, and Armin jerks forward by instinct, grabbing his arm.  


“Jean,” he says. “You didn’t change your mind on some whim. Marco… well, he’s gone. And he was your best friend. That has to change things for you.”  


“How do you know I’m here because of that?” Jean’s voice is defensive.  


Armin throws him a wry look.  


“I really don’t think you’re out here trying to break our training dummies. because of some random teenage nonsense, Jean,” he says.  


“It would be a pretty normal reaction to teenage bullshit. You know, from a teenager,” Jean’s voice is heavy with sarcasm.  


“That’s… fair, I suppose.” Armin bites his lip.  


“Yeah,” Jean agrees, and slumps against a nearby tree.  


Armin looks at him for a long moment. His hair is rumpled and sticking up at the ends like he’s run his hands through it over and over again. He searches for the right words.  


“I know you feel guilty, Jean,” he offers. The other boy stiffens like a board, turning to glare at Armin.  


Wrong thing to say, then.  


“What I mean is,” he adds hastily. What does he mean? “Err…”  


Jean just stares at him, which really doesn’t help. Armin gives up.  


“Just yell at me,” he finally says.  


“It’s no fun if you’re asking me to,” Jean says crankily. “You don’t have any fucking idea how I feel, Armin.”  


“No?”  


_“No,”_ Jean snarls. “You don’t even know-”  


He cuts himself off then, expression just- trapped. Armin bites his lip and looks away, compassion taking over once again.  


“Tell me what you did then,” he says. “Tell me what you thought, that you can’t say to anyone else. I promise you, I won’t think worse of you.”  


Jean just stares at him. His eyes are desperate. Trapped. Armin hates the sight of them.  


“Just tell me,” he sighs, abruptly tired. “Honestly, Jean, what do you care what I think?”  


“It’s not that,” snaps Jean, expression agonized. “I can’t say it out loud, it’ll make it- it’ll make me-”  


He falls silent then, looking past Armin. His fists clench and unclench on nothing.  


“A secret for a secret, then,” Armin offers. He wouldn’t normally dream of doing this, but something about the past few days and their endless stream of bodies and funerals have loosened something in his chest, made him reckless. And besides, Jean’s face just now kind of reminds him of his own, sometimes, and there’s an aching sort of empathy building in his chest. “A secret for a secret, and we’ll both have something over the other.”  


Jean looks at him then, really looks. Armin has no idea what his face looks like, but Jean’s face changes, looking at him.  


“A secret for a secret,” Jean says.  


“Yes.”  


“You go first,” Jean says, because despite occasionally doing a good impression of it, he is not completely stupid. Armin swallows, then grits his teeth and looks Jean in the eye.  


“I remember my parents’ deaths. I told Eren and Mikasa I don’t, that I wasn’t there, but that’s not true.”  


“…Oh,” Jean says, apparently stunned enough not to ask to many questions. Armin does his best to pretend he hasn’t been banking on this.  


“What about you?” he asks.  


“What?” Jean blinks and then shakes himself. “Hang on, you can’t just say something like that and then just stop!”  


“Can’t I?” Armin keeps his gaze still. “You’re the one who wants to talk, Jean. Not me.”  


“I never said I wanted to talk!”  


“Didn’t you?”  


Jean snaps.  


“I was relieved, all right?”  


“Relieved,” Armin says blandly.  


_“Yes,”_ Jean snaps, like something’s been set loose inside of him. “I was happy it wasn’t me! I was so fucking relieved it wasn’t me dead on that street.”  


“Because it was Marco,” Armin says, still staring Jean down.  


“My best friend,” Jean looks- broken. “My best friend, and part of me was relieved. A really tiny part- but. What kind of person does that make me?”  


Armin thinks about it, really thinks for a long minute. He replays the moment that that titan’s mouth had come snapping down on Eren’s arm, of how he had felt when he had sat on that rooftop afterwards and realized he was alive in part because his best friend was not.  


“A normal one, I think,” he replies, very quietly. “I mean… I hope you’re normal. Because that’s what I felt too.”  


He looks at Jean then, and he thinks maybe some of the honesty must bleed out into his expression, because he sees the other boy’s expression falter. Jean clenches and unclenches his bloody fist helplessly.  


“I don’t know what to say,” Jean says after a long moment.  


“Maybe neither of us need to say anything?” Armin suggests. Jean shrugs.  


“I guess?” he throws Armin a sharp, considering look. “You wanted to say something, though. You wouldn’t have come up to me otherwise.”  


“I did,” Armin admits hesitantly.  


“Well?” Jean gives him a wry smile. “Not like you’re afraid, are you?”  


Isn’t he? Armin blinks and then puts that aside, gathering his thoughts.  


“It won’t help,’ he says finally.  


“What won’t help?”  


_“This,”_ Armin snaps, throwing out a hand to encompass the chaos that used to be their training area. “You can hit every damn training dummy in here; you can hit everything in here and me too for good measure. It won’t help.”  


Jean stuffs his hands in his pockets defensively.  


“How do you know?”  


“Really, Jean?” Armin rolls his eyes, entirely unimpressed. “How do I know? _Really?_ ”  


Jean looks cranky. Armin ignores it, and steps up to Jean, tilting his head up so their faces are inches away from each other, just staring the other boy down. Or at least, it should have been. Somehow, with Jean, it turns into just staring into one another eyes. Armin has no idea what he’s doing, but Jean looks as though he’s searching for something, and he doesn’t really know if he wants him to find it, so he swallows around a suddenly dry throat and says what he wanted to in the first place.  


“It won’t help,” he repeats. “I know grieving, all right? I know it pretty damn well. And. Well. It won’t go away because you took it out on something. Or even someone.”  
He pauses, sucking in a breath to steady himself.  


“It isn’t going away. And it won’t go away in a month, or in six. But eventually… eventually you get so used to it hurting that it becomes normal. And you can forget, most of the time. Every now and then the pain will come back to you, but you’ll be used to it. You can deal with it.”  


Jean is staring at him. The anger has seeped out of his expression, and all that’s left is an odd expression that Armin recognizes but can’t define. He thinks it might be understanding, or empathy.  


“Don’t believe the people who tell you you’ll accept it,” he offers, a final bit of advice. “You won’t. It’ll always be unfair. But you can try to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else. You won’t succeed. But you can try. That’s important too.”  


“Is it?” Jean looks at him, miserable. Searching.  


“I want to believe it is,” he admits. “I don’t. But I want to.”  


This is another secret, but Armin is willing to give that one up for free, if only because Eren and Mikasa know him too well to find it surprising, and theirs is the only opinion he really, truly cares for.  


The two of them stare at each other for a long moment. Jean’s clenched fist loosens a little. He breathes out, hard, and turns away, rubbing a hand over his face.  


Armin nods, more to himself than to anyone else, and turns to leave.  


“Armin,” Jean’s voice is hesitant. Armin stops, turning back towards him.  


“What?”  


“Thank you. For what you said. For telling me your secret. Just… thank you.”  


Armin stares at him, uncertain.  


“You’re welcome, then,” he says finally, because he can’t for the life of him think of anything else to say. Then he turns and walks out of the training area, resisting the urge to look back.  


The next day, while Shadis throws a fit about the state of their training area, Jean and Armin flick the briefest of knowing glances at each other, and then stare determinedly ahead into the distance for the rest of his rant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the comments and the kudos, they really mean a lot to me!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter would have come out way earlier but my computer broke down just as I was going to post it. T_T But anyway, here it is.

Once Shadis is done shouting at them (Probably for the last time. Armin feels oddly nostalgic about it.) the small group of trainees who’ve chosen to join the Scouting Legion head out of Trost, to the Scouting Legion headquarters a little way out of the city. It’s the first time since the trial that he and Mikasa will be in the same building as Eren, and there’s an unspoken sense of anticipation growing between them the further to the edge of the city they get. Trying to distract himself from his growing impatience, Armin takes to watching the people passing by.  


From what he can tell, the people in the neighborhoods furthest from the gate, which the giant stone Eren carried now seals firmly shut, seem a little better off than most after the battle. There’s still the occasional pile of rubble in the streets and blank-eyed citizens push their way past them without a word, but most of the houses are still upright and occupied. Armin’s seen new refugees thronging the run-down buildings where many of Shinganshina’s old residents are still forced to live, adults gathering their meager possessions around them like a shield, children curled around the names on their arms like it’s all they have left to hold on to, and maybe it is. He knows the people here have been lucky.  


“It’s awful, isn’t it?” Sasha whispers from next to him. He nods, looking up at her. Her face looks terribly young in the morning light, and Armin remembers that she isn’t from Trost, that she wouldn’t have seen this happen before. Connie reaches over to grab her wrist and squeeze it, holding on to the place where his name is written across her skin, his own face drawn.  


“They’ll get by,” Jean says quietly from behind them. When Sasha turns to look at him in reproach he shakes his head at her. “They’ll have to. They did before, and we can’t help them unless we keep going.”  


“Jean’s not wrong,” Mikasa offers, though her eyes are sad. “These people will find a way to survive on their own. If the choice is between that and dying, they don’t really have a choice at all.”  


“Wonder how many of those kids we’ll be seeing in training in a couple of years?” Ymir says, a dark kind of amusement in her voice. Krista elbows her, face creased in pity, and she falls silent.  


No one else feels much like talking after that, and so they make the rest of the way to headquarters in silence. Armin’s own stomach stays clenched in empathy the entire time, but he pushes the feeling away. There are only so many things he can worry about at one time, and right now his best friend’s safety is the only priority he should be focusing on.

* * *

It’s a few days after Eren has explained his Titan powers to the rest of the 104th trainee squad, and Armin is worried. The explanation hadn’t gone badly, exactly, but when Jean had started talking Armin had found himself bristling. It’s not that he doesn’t understand how Jean’s feeling, or anything, but Armin sometimes looks at Eren and thinks he looks so much more- uncertain than he used to. He can’t imagine the pressure he must be under. That pressure’s only gotten worse since the squad had found out Eren was as clueless as the rest of them, and Armin can’t help but blame Jean for it.  


It isn’t really Jean’s fault, Armin knows. It’s just that with all the upheaval Trost caused, Armin feels lately the same way he did after Shiganshina- as though nothing, not even the ground under his feet, is solid. And Jean is the nearest reminder that his mind, pretty much his only asset, can be woefully wrong about people. Which is why he isn’t particularly pleased when he and Jean are assigned to clean out one of the castles many storerooms together. Apparently, his irritation shows.  


“Look, are you pissed at me or something?” Jean demands, the fifth time he tries to make conversation and is met with a clipped response.  


“No,” Armin replies flatly, turning his back and crouching down to start scrubbing down the lower shelves. He’s not convincing in the slightest, and he’s not trying to be.  


“Uh-huh,” Jean says. Armin can feel his eyes on the back of his neck. The scrutiny makes him rub the empty place on his arm against his trousers compulsively.  


“What, Jean?”  


“No offense, but I kind of feel like you’re always angry at me and I always have no idea why,” Jean says exasperatedly, slamming down one of the heavier boxes next to Armin. The dust it kicks up makes Armin sneeze, his eyes watering. “I mean, could you at least tell me when you’ve decided to take offense at something I said? Just let me know so at least I have a fucking clue or something?”  


Armin scrubs at his face irritably. “Eren.”  


Jean rolls his eyes. “Of course. Is there anything in your life that isn’t about Eren?”  


“You didn’t have to put even more pressure on him,” Armin retorts. “He’s already got half the Scouting Legion breathing down his neck.”  


“Maybe he needed to hear what I said to him, Armin. You and Mikasa, you never would have told him what I did.”  


“Because we worry about him!” Armin says, abruptly miserable. “You wouldn’t understand. Mikasa and I are the only ones who look out for him. That’s what we do.”  


“Well, someone has to look out for everyone else on the squad,” Jean says irritably. “I mean, if Eren hadn’t explained how he doesn’t really know what he’s doing, do you really think our superiors would have? People have a right to know what they’re dying for. Someone should make sure they know.”  


“And that person’s you?” Armin demands. He tries to keep his skepticism from showing, but honestly, Jean’s main motivation for the past three years has been his own self-interest. He’s never made a secret of it. However different he’s been acting lately, Armin doesn’t trust this new version of him so easily. In his experience, people don’t change.  


“If it has to be?” Jean retorts. “Then yeah. Maybe that’s what _I_ do, now.”  


Armin makes a wordless noise of frustration, and then bites his lip, thinking about it. It’s not an unfair argument. He’d agree with a lot of it if it weren’t for the fact that his best friend has enough to deal with as it is.  


“I get it,” he finally says, reluctantly. “I get it, but. Can’t you just… Eren belongs to our squad too. He shouldn’t have to feel responsible for other people’s deaths. He already blames himself for too much.”  


“Does he?” Jean raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Don’t glare at me like that, it’s a serious question. I don’t know him like you do. No one except Mikasa does. And from what I’ve seen he’s a reckless bastard who nearly got everyone on his squad killed. You included, Armin!”  


“That wasn’t his fault,” Armin insists. Jean throws him a disbelieving look. “Alright, fair enough. It was partially his fault. But he’s learned, all right?”  


“Learned?” Jean looks more doubtful than ever. Armin crosses his arms across his chest.  


“Are _you_ the same as you were before Trost?”  


Jean blinks, taken aback and then huffs out a reluctant laugh. “I guess not.”  


“I would have thought you of all people would believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt when they say they’ve changed.” Armin says, very pointedly.  


“I get your point,” Jean says, amused in a resigned sort of way now. “Fuck, just don’t compare me to him again, all right?”  


“Yeah,” Armin sighs, smile tugging at his lips. “Yeah, I won’t. Just… try to have a conversation with Eren that doesn’t involve the two of you sniping at each other? You might even like what you hear.”  


“I doubt it,” Jean snorts. “But since it’s you asking, I’ll try. I’m not making any promises though.”  


Armin nods, uncertain why his opinion even means anything to Jean, but he can’t say he doesn’t appreciate the other boy’s regard. They both turn back to their work, and a comfortable silence settles upon the room. Armin doesn’t really know what just happened, but Jean treats him as he always has in the days to come, and they’re beginning to work together as a team better than they ever have before in training, so he thinks it’s good. Probably.

* * *

Most of the expedition outside the walls is a blur of action, especially after Armin figures out that Annie is the Female Titan. Afterwards, though, he’s asked to recall it over and over again, so many times it starts to feel more like a story he tells than anything else, instead of something that actually happened to him. The quietest moments are clearest, especially once they reach the forest and his own involvement in the expedition becomes insignificant; it figures, he thinks in annoyance later, that the least important things would be what his mind chooses to focus on.  


What he remembers best is the overwhelmingly feeling of urgency that starts brewing under his skin the second he realizes who the Female Titan is and builds higher every second he has to stand on a branch in the middle of the forest and wait for- something. It’s a trap, obviously, but Armin has no idea what it’ll sound like once it’s sprung, and the uncertainty is driving him insane.  


“Armin?” Jean’s voice comes from next to him, and Armin looks over at him, startled. He’d almost forgotten Jean was even there. After their conversation about Commander Erwin’s plan they’d both fallen silent, Jean more concerned with keeping an eye on the Titans around them and Armin caught up in his own thoughts. “No offense, but if you fidget any harder I think you’re going to fall off the branch.”  


“Yeah,” Armin says, blank and distant and distracted. Jean sighs and reaches over to tug at a lock of his hair. He stills, not used to Jean showing such familiarity.  


“What’s wrong? You’ve been antsy since we got here.” Armin just stares at him for a second, trying to figure out the best way to explain himself to Jean.  


“I- if something happens to me will you-” he whispers urgently. “There’s something I realized, while we were fighting the Female Titan earlier. If I don’t- make it back- I mean- will you-”  


_“Hey,”_ Jean snaps, cutting Armin off, his face has going from curious to tense in an instant. “Don’t talk like that, alright? You’re getting out of this alive. We are all going to come out of this alive.”  


Armin shakes his head. “Jean, this is important. People need to know.”  


“If it’s something you thought up, then yeah, probably.” Jean acknowledges. “But don’t do that, alright? That thing where you sort of- accept you’re going to die. It’s kind of terrifying.”  


“What?” Armin blinks up at him, confused and a little affronted. “I don’t accept anything. What are you talking about?”  


“Yeah, you do!” A Titan directly below them begins jumping up and down, expression eerily blank. It’s a small one, too short to reach them by far, but it still makes their branch tremble a little. Armin puts out a hand to steady himself. “You did it back then, when we didn’t have enough horses. You did it back in Trost, too,” Jean says lowering his voice, although Armin doubts it would make a difference. “Connie told me that when Mikasa ran out of gas, you gave her yours, and told them to leave you.”  


“Well, yeah?” Armin says uncertainly. “But it just made sense then. I can’t fight Titans, I probably wasn’t going to make it to that building anyway. You guys needed Mikasa. Way more than you needed me. It just- it was practical.”  


“It was practical, so you gave up a chance to survive?” Jean glares at him. “No offense, Armin, but that’s insane. You don’t strike me as someone who wants to live very much.”  


“I’m not suicidal, Jean.”  


“I don’t think you are. I just think you’re a shit strategist.”  


_“Excuse me?”_ Armin practically sputters.  


“It’s not your fault.” Jean tells him. He’s turned away now, his gaze fixed on one of the other Titans beneath their tree, one that honestly doesn’t look all that interested in them and is just sitting on its roots. Armin irritably visualizes chucking something at his head to get his attention back. “Your information’s flawed.”  


“My information is not flawed!”  


“Yes, it is,” Jean turns back to face Armin, leaning against the trunk of their tree. He’s still glancing down at the Titan every few seconds, though, Armin notes. “You always forget to take yourself into account when making plans. It’s a problem.”  


“I- what?” That stops Armin short.  


“You said we needed Mikasa. That’s true, but we needed you too. In that tower, it was you coming up with a plan, wasn’t it? We might have gotten the fuel anyway, but a lot more people would have died without you.”  


“That’s… true.” Armin falters. “That’s true, but-”  


“There’s no but. It’s just true, Armin.”  


Armin makes an exasperated noise, too wound up to worry about attracting Titans anymore. “What do you want from me, Jean?”  


“I want you to _fight_ ,” Jean says fiercely.  


“I can’t,” Armin points out weakly. “You know I can’t, I’ve never been a good fighter-”  


Jean throws him a hard glance. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. There’s more than one way to fight. You’ve got no problem thinking up a hundred ways for Mikasa or Eren or our whole damned squad to survive. How come you never do that for yourself?”  


“I don’t know.” Armin admits, after a long moment.  


“Nobody can fight for you except you, Armin. Mikasa and Eren might try, but if you don’t want to be saved? You’ll die, and they won’t be able to do a damned thing about it.”  


“What do you know about it, Jean?” Armin asks defensively.  


“Nothing, I guess,” Jean shrugs a little. “But I’m a better fighter than you are. Maybe there’s a reason for that.”  


“I…” Armin says, trailing off. He really doesn’t know what to say to that. Jean looks down again and winces.  


“Also, this might not be the right time to say this, but I think we should move. I think that Titan’s thinking about uprooting the entire damn tree to get us down.”  


“What? No,” Armin looks down shoving his confusion over the conversation away. The Titan does seem to be tugging experimentally at the roots. “Oh no. If one of them manages it they might all learn to do the same!”  


“I know.” They both dart across to the next tree. It’s a little taller, and Armin can’t help but relax a little though he knows it might not help. Especially considering that from their new vantage point he can see that many of the Titans around Nanaba, Krista, Reiner and the others have started to climb with a lot more efficiency.  


“Whatever’s going on in there, I really hope it ends soon,” he begins, when an earsplitting roar shatters the relative peace of the forest.  


“What the-” Jean breaks off, swearing as they both have to grab onto their branch to keep from falling off when all the Titans around them turn and run as one deeper into the forest. The vibrations from their footsteps rattle the trees violently and Armin can hear startled cries coming from the others around him. He clings grimly to his branch, sliding to a crouch to lower his center of gravity and hopes none of them were startled enough that they fell off. Even if the Titans ignored them, at this height falling would be a death sentence.  


The sounds of the Titans fade off into the distance. Armin finally dares to look up, and lets out a sigh of relief as he starts to count the heads below him. No one seems to be missing. He starts getting to his feet, moving carefully.  


“What the _fuck_ was that,” Jean demands flatly. Armin can tell he’s about to start swearing again, but he’s interrupted by Nanaba.  


“That’s the signal to head back,” she says, gesturing towards the sky, where a single plume of smoke is making its way upwards. “I know it’s been a stressful day, but it’s almost over with. Just keep that in mind, alright?”  


“Sure, we will.” Armin hears Jean mutter and half-smiles at his irritation.  


“Come on you two!” Krista calls up to them, her face pale with relief. “We should head down before the Titans come back!”  


The thought of the Titans returning is enough to spur everyone in the vicinity into moving faster, and Jean and Armin are no different. All in all, they make excellent time getting away from the woods. Making their way back to Wall Rose is a little harder, though, but Armin’s not involved in much of the fighting. He still wishes he could tell someone else about Annie, make sure that the information doesn’t die with him. But the knowledge that he has to tell someone about her and the conversation he just had with Jean both make him a little warier of taking risks, a little more set on fighting for his own life as well as other people’s. Or so he notices as the Scouting Legion wearily makes its way home.  


Maybe Jean knows what he’s talking about, after all.

* * *

After he accuses Annie Leonhart of being a traitor in front of his superior officers and his own best friend looks at him as though he’s the one who betrayed him, Armin wanders off the compound for a while, into the woods surrounding the Scouting Legion headquarters. Normally, recruits wouldn’t be allowed nearly this much freedom, but after an expedition there is an unspoken agreement that rules have been relaxed, as long as everyone gives a good impression of following them.  


He wanders through the trees, watching the late afternoon light turn everything golden for a little while, wishing he could appreciate the beauty of it more.  


There are rumors that sometimes surface every now and again that people without names are incapable of having feelings. That’s rubbish, Armin knows. He feels entirely too much, or at least that’s what it feels like. But now a small part of him can’t help but wonder if he is flawed, in some fundamental way. That something in him is broken somehow. How else could he have accused someone he’s trained alongside of for years of being a traitor this easily?  


“Armin,” Jean says from behind him, and Armin nearly jumps out of his skin.  


_“Fuck,”_ he says, before catching himself.  


Jean snorts. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear before.”  


“You snuck up on me!”  


Jean just snickers. Armin scowls at him, and starts walking again.  


“Armin!” Jean calls out. Armin ignores him. “Seriously, Armin, wait up.”  


“I’m really not in the mood to talk to anyone, Jean.”  


“Too bad,” Jean says, jogging after him until he’s caught up. Armin sighs heavily.  


“What do you want, Jean?”  


Jean shrugs, not giving him an answer. Armin turns to glare at him, and Jean holds up his hands in defense.  


“Okay, fuck, don’t look at me like that. I just thought- well-” he tugs at his sleeves nervously. “Look, if anyone here knows Eren can be an asshole sometimes it’s me. So if you want to complain you can, you know. If you want.”  


Armin holds the glare for a moment longer, and then abruptly feels- tired, maybe. Of what, he’s not sure, but he is.  


“I don’t want to complain,” he says with finality, turning his eyes back towards the path. “I just…”  


He trails off then, unsure how to explain it. He’s not sure if he and Eren make sense to anyone who hasn’t been friends with someone since they were toddlers. He gets the feeling even Mikasa doesn’t fully understand the two of them sometimes. Knowing a person for most of their life resulted in a relationship that was more complicated than most people realized, or so Armin thinks. Armin loves Eren, in a way that is bone-deep and absolute and unshakable. But at the same time, they’ve known each other so long that the uglier parts of their respective personalities have become old acquaintances at this point. A thousand petty jealousies and stupid arguments lie between them that shouldn’t mean anything to them, that don’t mean anything in the long run, but which every now and again make Armin want to throttle Eren. Eren probably feels the same way about him.  


“You wouldn’t understand,” he finally sighs in defeat.  


“No?” Jean asks, unruffled. His eyes flick over Armin curiously.  


“No,” Armin says. “And besides, you didn’t seem to think much of our friendship before. You can’t be interested in this.”  


“I just think it’s kind of unhealthy, sticking so close to two people.” Jean says, ruthlessly blunt as always. “Doesn’t mean I don’t understand family.” He makes a face. “Especially the kind that can be annoying, so. Like I said, complain if you want.”  


“I just- I didn’t do anything _wrong_ ,” Armin says in frustration. “I didn’t do anything wrong. What was I supposed to do, keep everything I saw to myself? Annie’s his friend, I get it, it must be awful for him. I just don’t understand why he’s angry at me.”  


“I pick fights with my mom all the time when I’m pissed,” Jean admits, stuffing his hands into his jacket pockets. “It’s easiest to get mad at someone you know, sometimes. Maybe that’s what he’s doing? It’s not like he can go mouth off to Commander Erwin, you know.”  


Armin thinks about that. It makes him feel better somehow, like all his problems are simple and teenage and trivial. “I guess.”  


“You’ll make up,” Jean declares. Armin hadn’t been worried that they wouldn’t in the first place, but he finds Jean’s confidence oddly reassuring anyway.  


“Thanks Jean.”  


Jean nods, and then throws Armin a long, curious look. Armin raises his eyebrows back in question.  


“Hey, can I ask you something?” Jean stuffs his hands in his pockets uncomfortably.  


“Yes?” Armin looks at him expectantly.  


“Why are you friends with him?” Jean asks. Armin pauses and stops walking, genuinely confused.  


“I’m sorry?”  


“Why are you friends with Eren?” Jean repeats. “It’s not like… he’s not nearly as smart as you.”  


Armin blinks coolly, more than a little offended on Eren’s behalf, even if they are arguing.  


“If you can’t understand friendship that exists for reasons beyond similar character traits then that’s really your own failing, Jean.”  


“Oh, for-” says Jean crankily. “I wasn’t insulting Eren, all right? _Really,_ ” he adds, seeing the expression on Armin’s face.  


“You’re just… smart, aren’t you?” he looks at Armin hesitantly. “So if you like him… I don’t know, there has to be a good reason, right?”  


Armin blinks again, this time in honest confusion. That had sounded an awful lot like a compliment, and as far as he’s been able to tell, Jean little reason to give one to the best friend of a boy he hated.  


Well. They’re not exactly just that anymore. Between all the conversations they’ve had since Trost, and fighting the Female Titan together Armin thinks they might actually have become friends, of a sort. Enough so that he doesn’t think Jean’s trying to be offensive.  


“Uh,” he straightens his shoulders absently, head cocked to the side as he considers this. “Well. I guess… Eren is passionate, isn’t he? He fights for what he wants, always. Even when he loses. Even when he knows he’s going to lose. And- and when he sets a path for himself he always follows through, no matter how many people tell him he’s crazy.”  


“I guess what I’m trying to say is that he’s brave, in a way a lot of people find it difficult to be, and I’ve always liked that about him.” Armin shrugs uncomfortably.  


“That can be a flaw as much as it is a virtue,’ Jean points out. Armin nods.  


“I know. But you asked me why I’m friends with him, and that’s a large part of why. Friendship isn’t always based in logic, is it?”  


“I guess not,” Jean tilts his head towards Armin, expression thoughtful. “Thanks, Armin.”  


“Jean,” Armin says hesitantly as the other boy turns away. “Wait.”  


When Jean looks back at him, Armin just- looks at him for a second. Jean’s abrasive sometimes, but well, he’s not a complete asshole. Mostly. And he really is trying, as far as Armin can see, to be better than he was.  


Well. Alright then.  


Abruptly, before he can second-guess himself into changing his own mind, Armin shoves his right hand towards the other boy, pulling the sleeve of his shirt up as he does so. His wrist, impossibly bare, is set between them. He hears Jean suck in a breath.  


“That’s why, too,” Armin says shakily. His heart is pounding violently against his chest, and he opens and clenches the hand he’s not holding out around nothing. “I- a person who would stick around and protect you and- and care about you even when other people are telling them not to- a person like that… they’re the sort of person you should hold on to, right?”  


There is a long silence. Armin is too afraid to meet Jean’s eyes, and so he fixes his gaze somewhere to the left of Jean’s ear and waits.  


“Yeah,” Jean says finally. “Yes. That’s the sort of person you should hold on to.”  


Armin manages to meet his eyes at last and sees that Jean looks oddly pensive, somehow. He steps closer and Armin tilts his head up to blink at him. Jean just wordlessly reaches out, catching hold of Armin’s sleeve and tugging it down again, very gently, using both his hands, like Armin might break if he were rough with him. Once he’s done, he just holds on to Armin’s wrist for a second, running his thumbs over the place where his name would be if he had one, and then finally lets go. Armin lets his hand fall back to his side, feeling oddly vulnerable, trying to resist the urge to rub the inside of his wrist over and over again against his trousers.  


“Thanks, Armin,” Jean says, very quietly.  


Armin swallows hard and nods. The two of them begin walking again, by unspoken agreement heading back towards headquarters. A silence settles between them, not quite comfortable but not strained either, and though Armin considers breaking it that just- doesn’t feel right. He glances over at Jean, whose eyes are distant, and thinks he might feel the same.  


As the two of them approach the edge of the forest Armin can see a tall, slender figure keeping guard, stock still as the trees they stand amongst. The sight almost alarms him- it’s getting dark, and the forest is becoming eerie in the dimming light- but he realizes it’s Mikasa soon enough, and lets out a sharp breath of relief. Jean, beside him, just snorts when he sees her, and the sound breaks the tension that’s grown between them since his confession.  


“She was all set to go in there and get you herself, you know,” he tells Armin, who isn't all that surprised.  


“Oh?”  


“Yeah. She would have done, but-” Jean shrugs a little. “I told her maybe you’d like to talk to someone who wasn’t so close to Eren, you know?”  


Armin thinks about it.  


“Maybe I did,” he allows. Then a thought occurs to him. “Hang on. Where exactly is Eren, anyway?”  


“In Hange’s lab, being such a sulky little shit even Captain Levi- very reluctantly- got involved and told me to help sort it out,” Jean says wryly. “That guy’s really grumpy. I mean more than me, even.”  


“And here I thought you came of the goodness of your heart,” Armin narrows his eyes at the other boy. “I’m disappointed Jean.”  


He waits, deadpan expression on his face as Jean blanches and squawks and finally, finally comes to the realization that Armin is teasing him. Then he smiles at Jean, very evilly, and walks away, leaving him sputtering with indignation.  


Honestly, it’s kind of fun, messing with Jean. He just wears all his emotions so openly.  


As he gets closer to Mikasa, he raises his eyes to meet hers squarely. A few moments pass, and then Armin smiles at her a little. She smiles back, and then she turns and they head back to headquarters together, close enough that their shoulders brush as they walk.  


They don’t speak, but then the two of them have never needed words.

* * *

He and Mikasa part ways once they get inside, she heading to the women’s dormitories, and he towards Hange’s lab. Once he’s there though Hange informs him cheerfully that Eren’s headed back his room, and so Armin heads there next, passing Captain Levi’s squad’s old rooms on his way. He frowns as he notices that they’ve already been emptied, belongings probably passed on to their families. Armin hadn’t known anyone who’d died on their mission, but he knows Eren grieves their loss, and that’s enough to make his heart ache as he walks through the silent corridor, which is quiet in the oppressive way only the complete absence of people can cause.  


What will they do with his things when- if- he dies on a mission? Maybe Eren and Mikasa will keep some of it to remember him by, and so will some of the trainees he’s grown close to, but. The rest of it will probably be thrown out. It bothers him a little that he’d be so easily erased. He doesn’t even have someone with his name on their wrist. If he died he’d just- disappear, in no time at all. It’s more than a little terrifying.  


He shakes off his thoughts as he finally gets to Eren’s door, and knocks briefly, noise echoing down the hallway. There’s a short scuffing noise, and then the door swings open. Eren blinks at him, his hair sticking up on one side as though he’s been lying on it. The sight makes Armin smile a little despite himself.  


“Hi,” he says. “Can I come in?”  


Eren nods, standing aside and closing the door behind him. They face each other, both of them equally awkward. Armin toys with the edge of his shirt. Eren shuffles his feet. The silence stretches out between them.  


“I’m sorry,” Eren offers up finally. It’s quiet, not at all like his usual self. “I was being stupid.”  


Armin clears his throat. “Yeah. I’m sorry too. I know Annie’s your friend.”  


Eren nods jerkily. Silence falls again, and Armin sighs, suddenly frustrated with it all.  


“I hate fighting with you,” he blurts out. Eren almost smiles at that.  


“Yeah, me too,” he says.  


The tension eases a little, and Armin drops down onto Eren’s bed, lying flat and keeping his gaze on the ceiling because he doesn’t want to meet Eren's eyes. He can feel Eren hesitating, and then the other boy throws himself down next to him, shuffling around until they are close but not touching.  


“Are you not mad at me anymore?” Eren asks hesitantly  


“I was never really mad at you, Eren,” Armin confesses.  


“Yeah, me neither,” Eren agrees, and buries his head in Armin’s shoulder.  


“I am kind of jealous though,” Armin admits.  


“You are?” Eren raises his head a little to look at him.  


“Some things just come so easily to you. Trust especially.” Armin swallows hard.  


Eren settles his head back into the crook of Armin’s neck. “Yeah, well. Some things come easy to you too. You always make smart choices.” He gives a bitter snort. “I’m pretty sure Commander Erwin and Captain Levi would love for me to be able to do that.”  


“In difficult situations, there are really few good choices, Eren.” Armin bites his lip. “And you just happen to get into a lot more difficult situations than I do.”  


There is a long silence.  


“What happened to Levi’s squad was never your fault.” Armin says quietly.  


Eren sighs, then turns to face him, wrapping his arms around Armin like a child holding a teddy bear. It’s something they did when they were children, falling asleep on the same bed, something they did again when they were crammed into the small sleeping spaces of the refugee camps. Armin wraps an arm around him, still staring up at the ceiling; it may just be his imagination but Eren’s body feels thinner than it did before Trost.  


“See? That came pretty easily to you,” Eren mumbles into his shoulder. “Being an awesome friend.”  


It makes Armin laugh a little, and he buries his head into Eren’s hair to muffle it by instinct. “That one comes easily to both of us I guess.”  


A comfortable silence settles between them then, and Armin drifts off, feeling the pulse of Eren’s heart thrumming against the hand he has pressed against his back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guys have great new year, and thanks once again for all the kudos and comments!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The biggest plot twist in this story is that the writer is still writing it. Also, Armin catches feelings.

Annie and Armin have never really spoken. They’ve never had a reason to, after all. Annie had stuck to herself more than any other person in training; as far as Armin could remember Eren had been the only person in their squad who’d formed what could ostensibly be called a friendship with her, and even he really couldn’t tell anyone much about her. So Armin really isn’t sure what to expect from her when he’s ordered to convince her to walk into a trap. He figures it’ll be straightforward; either she’ll say yes or no and that’ll be that. They’ll just have to adapt their plan to whatever answer she gives. 

The thing is, when she looks at him and asks if he really thinks she looks like a good person to him, Armin has to stop himself from staring at her. There’s something that strikes him as remarkably familiar about the expression on her face. It’s… desperate, maybe, in a way he recognizes from his own. She needs something from him, but he doesn’t know what it is, and he doesn’t have the time to figure it out. 

Also, if he’s being honest, there’s a small but loud part of him that just- doesn’t care. He has a job to do, and Eren’s life depends on him doing it, and, well. What Annie needs is so far down on the list of his priorities it might as well not exist. 

She sees it, he thinks. She sees _him_ , and he sees her, and they both understand, but it doesn’t change anything at all. Those last few seconds before he leaves her in that alleyway are some of the most disquieting he’s ever lived through. It makes his skin crawl sometimes when he thinks of it later, the unwanted intimacy of those few seconds, the strange sense of violation he’d felt reflected back at him in Annie’s eyes. 

He walks away from Stohess with the unnerving knowledge of his own ability for ruthlessness. Annie doesn’t walk away at all. 

Looking back on it, he thinks it’s the start of something, but for the life of him, even with the help of hindsight he really couldn’t say what it is. 

* * *

He has to find Mikasa.  


It’s the one thought keeping him moving even after watching Bertholdt and Reiner flee with Eren’s limp body clutched in Reiner’s jaws. Find Mikasa.  


If he stops to think about whether or not she’s even alive, or if she’s going to be in any fit state to go chasing after Eren, he knows he’ll lose whatever composure he’s managed to maintain, and so he channels all of his focus into this one goal. Find Mikasa.  


He hears someone calling his name, and turns his head to see Jean jogging up the castle wall to meet him.  


“Hey,” Jean says, skidding to a stop next to him. It’s only been a few days since Armin saw him last, but it feels like far longer somehow. His hair is sticking up as though he has been running his hands through it, and his eyes have large, dark circles underneath them. Armin supposes the units stationed elsewhere hadn’t wasted any time sleeping on their way to the latest catastrophe.  


“Jean,” he says in return, because he cannot think of anything else to say, not with his mind tying itself up in knots over what has happened to Eren. Of what could have happened to Mikasa.  


Jean’s eyes narrow as they examine him for a quick moment.  


“You’re alright,” he says, relieved, as if he needed to say it to confirm it. Armin just gives him a weak shrug, not really trusting his voice. “Are you looking for Mikasa? I’ll help.”  


“I- good,” Armin says after a minute, turning to look at the ruins of Castle Utgard. It looks like half the building has collapsed in on itself, and the panic he’s been trying to ignore rises in his throat, choking him. He sucks in a breath and then lets it out, struggling to calm himself down, but his heart has started thumping violently in his chest and it is all he can hear.  


At least until Jean’s hand wraps itself around his shoulder like an anchor.  


“Hey,” Jean says gently. “It’s ok.” Armin makes a vaguely strangled sound of disbelief in response and Jean laughs just a little, no real amusement in it at all.  


“Right, so it’s not okay,” he says. “And there’s a good chance we won’t make it back. That we might not rescue Eren or that we could all die trying.”  
There is a short pause.  


“That’s… helpful?” Armin offers.  


“Fuck off,” Jean says, which is fair. “What I mean is, there’s also a chance that we could save Eren. That you can save him. And the smartest thing you can do right now is to focus on that. On how to do that. And the first step would probably be to find Mikasa.”  


Jean’s words are clumsy, perhaps, but they reach Armin, and he takes a deep breath, steadying himself. “You’re right,” he says. “Thank you.” 

Jean doesn’t gloat or smirk or do anything Armin’s come to expect from him in the three years they were in training together. Its stopped surprising him, though, the fact that Jean can surprise him. Besides, Jean’s changed plenty since Trost. Armin isn’t fully acquainted with this new version of him, but he’s pretty sure he likes him better.  


“Come on,” Jean says briskly instead, and they turn as one to keep searching the ruins. “Or do you want to spend all day here or something? I mean, the view’s nice if wrecked castles are your thing…”  


“I missed you,” Armin says, and he means it to be sarcastic. It _is_ sarcastic, and judging from the face Jean makes at him in response, that’s the way it sounded.  


It’s also true.  


Armin has a sudden uncomfortable sensation that he’s missing something important, but he shelves it away. Hanji is still unconscious; Mikasa is still missing. There’s too much to get done.  


* * *

He doesn’t really think during the mission to get Eren back, but if anyone had asked him to pick out a coherent thought, his answer would have been, _No._  


_No_ , when he sees Commander Erwin get snatched up and _No_ , while Bertholdt and Reiner were dragging his best friend off to who-knows-where. _No_ , when Jean tumbles off his horse and the only thing Armin can think to do is throw himself right off his own horse and put himself between him and the nearest Titan, no matter how suicidal it is.  


He doesn’t really know if he deserves commendation for that knee-jerk reaction no matter what Jean says afterwards. He gets it anyway. He supposes it is what it is.  


It doesn’t comfort him.  


* * *

A few hours after the chaos of their return Armin finds himself exhausted but unable to sleep. He squirms around in his sleeping roll for what feels like hours trying to get into a comfortable position, until finally one of the other boys chucks a pillow at him for making too much noise and he gives up.  


He ends up wandering up to the top of Wall Rose, heading to a section he knows won’t be guarded- after all, the Garrison is trying to stop Titans from getting in, not people from wandering around the walls in a sleep-deprived haze.  


The world outside Wall Rose is utterly still and peaceful. It’s a little after two in the morning, and Armin knows that despite the Garrison’s current state of hyper-alertness there’s no chance of any further attack. Reiner and Bertholdt were too injured to attempt anything, and though reports of some kind of Beast Titan have been filtering in, Armin doubts it would make any kind of attack on the Wall now that Eren’s proven to be so unpredictable, even to his own side. No, right now is for regrouping, for both sides.  


Armin wants to come up with a strategy, something useful, but he can’t focus no matter how much he struggles. He keeps replaying what happened earlier over and over again in his head, the way Betholdt looked at him. Like he was the monster.  


Like he was the monster, when they were the ones who’d killed his grandfather. Who’d killed the only home he’d ever known.  


He doesn’t want to be bitter about that. He looks in the direction of Shiganshina and is anyway.  


He hears footsteps coming up the stairs and grits his teeth in frustration, before just- letting it go. His confusion and guilt and fury- they aren’t important enough to show to anyone he doesn’t trust.  


It’s Jean. Of course it is. Who else enjoys paying witness to his worst moments this much anyway?  


“Jean,” he says grimly, as he tries desperately not to let any emotion through.  


It doesn’t work, because of course it doesn’t. It’s Jean, and Jean’s beginning to know him. Despite all of Armin’s efforts.  


“Armin,” he replies, and just stands there in silence, burying his hands in his pockets. His eyes are an impossible colour in the moonlight, a lit-up golden-brown that Armin doesn’t know how to explain. “Are you okay?”  


Armin laughs harshly.  


“Fair enough,” Jean says wryly. “Tough night, huh?”  


“Tough day,” Armin answers. Jean just looks at him.  


“Tougher day tomorrow,” he points out. Which is fair enough. Tomorrow is when they start telling people their loved ones are dead.  


“Yeah,” he replies. It makes him smile, though. Even if Armin and everyone like him are consumed by mistakes and thoughts of what-ifs- well, there’ll always be people like Jean, who think about people first.  


Doesn’t do a thing to make him feel better about himself, though.  


“Who told Marco’s family?” he blurts out in the same moment the question occurs to him, before he realizes it could be a sensitive topic.  


Jean flinches bodily and then sucks in a breath to steady himself, which Armin’s embarrassed horror only worsens at. He kind of wishes he could slam his face against the grey stone in front of him.  


“Me,” Jean manages, finally. “Mostly it’s our superiors who do it, but I know- I knew his family, so. I asked.”  


There’s a story in the grief and exhaustion on Jean’s face, but Armin doesn’t ask. He’s had enough of grief today.  


“You would.” He says instead, simply.  


“What’s that mean?” Jean blinks at him.  


“It means what it means.” Armin looks back in confusion. “You think about things like that, don’t you?”  


Jean frowns, thinking. “I guess I do? I don’t know, you’d be pretty fucked up to not think about that sort of thing, right?”  


That stings more than Armin would like it to. It must show on his face, because Jean looks alarmed, and Armin wants to kick himself.  


“I don’t mean you,” he says hastily. “It’s really not- I just-”  


He breaks off then, searching for words.  


“I know you care,” Jean says finally. “You really do care.”  


“Not enough,” Armin admits. “Not like you do.”  


“You care the way _you_ do,” Jean says fiercely. “You care, Armin.”  


“How would you know?” Armin stares at him.  


“How do I know anything about anyone?” Jean retorts irritably. “I know what I see. You can try to convince yourself different, but I know this much about you, Armin: you care about people.” He stops, letting out a tired breath. “Look, this isn’t what I came here for. I don’t want to fight with you, all right? Not tonight.”  


Armin winces. “You’re right. It’s been a long day.” He bites down hard on his lip. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… that is, I don’t know why I do this. I just, I…”

“You just hate yourself,” Jean says. His voice is very quiet.  


“I don’t,” Armin says after a long pause.  


“Sure,” Jean says, very sincere. “Well you know what? I don’t hate you. I actually kind of like you. A lot, as it turns out. And here’s the thing. Listening to you piss on someone I happen to like all the time? Someone who’s my friend? It’s kind of annoying.”  


“You don’t understand,” Armin says miserably.  


“Great. Explain it to me.”  


“I-” Armin starts, and cannot bring himself to finish.  


“Armin,” Jean says, and somehow, the way he says Armin’s name breaks him.  


“I am made of _shit_ ,” he says out loud, half-laughing. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jean flinch.  


“Armin,” he says, pained in a way that Armin doesn’t really understand.  


“I really am,” he says. He keeps seeing Bertholdt’s face in his head, replaying his expression over and over again. “You don’t know- you don’t know-” _You don’t even know_ , he remembers Jean telling him, that night after Trost, and he cuts himself off to laugh again at how presumptuous he’d been then. Like it was so easy to just tell anyone what was wrong.  


Like it was so easy to say, _I am beginning to think I want to see the ocean more than I want to be any approximation of a good person. And obviously, that’s kind of a problem._  


“Armin,” Jean says again, louder. Armin looks at him. And then, more strongly, he says- “You saved my life, you know. Mikasa told me, when I went to see her.”  


“It was instinct,” Armin shakes his head dismissively.  


“Does it really matter what it was?” Jean demands. “I’d be dead without you. That much even you can’t argue with.”  


Armin opens his mouth, and then closes it. Apparently, even he can’t, after all.  


“I hate you,” he says instead, very childishly.  


Jean- smiles at him, and it makes his heart skip a beat. The shock of that smile runs through him, faster than any blade could hope.  


“Just _stop_ ,” he says miserably, pleading. He presses his lips together when Jean turns to him in confusion, refusing to explain himself. He’s not that stupid; not yet anyway.  


Jean waits a long moment just staring at his face through narrowed eyes, and then he nods, almost to himself, almost as though he’s been given an answer. He turns to gaze over the wall, and Armin turns with him on instinct, the two of them keeping watch. The silence between them starts awkward, at least on Armin’s side, but he eventually lets out a huff and curls into a ball, wrapping his arms tight around his legs, tired suddenly of caring too much, and Jean glances at him, half-smiling and slumping against a nearby turret, and it’s alright.  


They both stay up until the sun begins to peek over the horizon, and end up getting shooed away by members of the Garrison who have enough sympathy for them not to report their infraction to anyone. They make themselves scarce after. Armin spends the rest of the day resolutely refusing to let himself think.  


* * *

It’s as grueling as Armin expects, delivering the news of the deaths of various Survey Corps to their families, and occasionally, their names. More grueling than usual, according to the more senior members, because of the operation in question and the fact that they have Military Corps amongst the dead, whose deaths it is apparently their job to report, despite the fact that there are more than a few squadrons in Wall Sina perfectly capable of doing the job.  


The general misery of it all lends itself to an atmosphere of bitter humour among the 104th squad as they troop back to headquarters. Jean, Sasha, Connie and Mikasa trudge a little ahead of Armin, Eren and Krista having been confined to their quarters after being deemed too important to lose. Armin spares a moment of deep pity for Eren, who was probably already chafing at the bit.  


“Next time,” Jean says crankily, and Armin thinks with a start that he’s only saying it because Ymir isn’t here, will never be here again, just like Reiner or Bertholdt will never be again; of their own choice, and he bits down hard on his lip. “Next time the Military Corps gets to do this damn job themselves.”  


“No fucking kidding,” Connie returns, and the group of them fall silent as one for a minute or two. Armin kicks a little at the ground, little clouds of dust rising up and falling again.  


“You guys are pretty cool though,” offers Sasha, hiking her bag up her shoulder. When she sees everyone look at her in confusion she waves her other hand in an absent kind of gesture. “Just… with everything you’ve done, people have been talking about you guys? You keep coming back, and I guess…well. I guess you’re part of the Survey Corps now. So.”  


“So are you,” Mikasa says simply. “I’ve heard the refugees down in Wall Rose mention you more than once.”  


Connie nods violently in agreement. Sasha blushes a furious red.  


“I guess my dad’s been talking me up,” she says in embarrassment. When the rest of them smirk and grin at her, respectively, her blush deepens until her entire face is red, up to the tips of her ears.  


Jean’s the one who rescues her “Don’t worry,” he tells her, and Armin rolls his eyes because he’s practically puffing out his chest. “We all know I’m the biggest hero on the squad.”  


His statement was met with the deserving number of jeers and boos from the rest of his squad, and he squawks and ducks as Connie and Sasha take swipes at his head.  


“Didn’t you tell me you got knocked out?” Sasha demands.  


“He did. Armin had to drag him onto the nearest horse. He didn’t even wake till we were back at Wall Rose,” Connie says, smirking. Jean makes a horrified noise of embarrassment.  


“I’m grateful,” he says, shooting Armin a look. Armin smiles back, helplessly.  


“You’d better be!” Sasha replies in amusement. She reaches over to Armin and squeezes his forearm, hard. “He saved your life.”  


“He did,” agreed Jean. Armin flushes hard. He doesn’t know where to look. Sasha smiles at him, mischievous but understanding.  


“So Armin’s the real hero here.”  


“To be fair,” Mikasa interjects, making everyone turn to her in shock. “He did save me.”  


“Yeah.” Jean says, triumphant. “Yes. I saved Mikasa!” His face is distinctly smug, and Armin ducks his head to hide his smile at the sight.  


“Thank you,” Mikasa tells him, and half-smiles in that way she does.  


“You’re welcome!” Jean practically squeaks, and he’s flailing at her, flushing deeply, and it should be funny but all of a sudden the humor has drained out of the situation for Armin.  


Armin feels… strange, he realizes. He looks at Mikasa, at the girl he’s loved as family since he was nine, and all he can feel is the dizzying urge to- he doesn’t even know, but there is a sudden resentment rising in him that takes him completely aback.  


_You’re being ridiculous,_ he tells himself, but the feeling refuses to subside no matter how many times he pushes it away.  


* * *

The problem with Armin, really, is that he’s entirely incapable of lying to himself. He’s sometimes wished for greater powers of self-delusion, especially when it comes to his own capabilities, but somehow, he remains the one person he’s never managed to fool in that regard.  


In any case this means it doesn’t escape his notice that whenever Jean Kirstein looks at him and… well, actually whenever Jean Kirstein looks at him, his entire body just- lights up. It’s stupid. It makes him feel stupid. He has no idea why anyone would find this sensation appealing, but it exists all the same, whether he likes it or not.  


_I don’t want this,_ he thinks insistently, desperately. I’ve never wanted this. _Take it away. I don’t want it._  


Unfortunately, his heart has no intention of listening to his head in this. Armin is just going to have to put up with it, like it or not, and he decidedly does not.  


* * *

Armin finds that the best way to avoid thinking about his feelings is to focus on something else. Luckily, there’s a lot to focus on in the aftermath of returning to Wall Rose. Moving into the woods fully takes the better part of a week, especially because they have to be so discreet about it. Figuring out supplies, working out patrol schedules- even with all of eight people living in their little cabin, there are enough logistics to work out that Armin doesn’t have to think at all, if he doesn’t want to. Unfortunately for him, his preoccupation with his own problems means that he doesn’t have a lot of attention to spare for everyone else. Which is why it takes him so long to realize that Mikasa has been working alongside them, against everyone’s advice, despite her injuries. Armin had warned her off it when they first arrived at the cabin, and Mikasa being fairly sensible under most circumstances, he’d assumed she would listen. In all honesty he sometimes forgets that Mikasa is a teenager like the rest of them, and that therefore she maintained certain delusions about her own invulnerability. When he brings the issue up with her, she just shrugs indifferently, says something to the effect of “Don’t worry about it, Armin,” and wanders off to- lift heavy rocks or some other activity that makes Armin wince just picturing.  


“Her ribs aren’t going to heal right,” he grouses to Eren later, eyebrows knitting, as they sit on the porch and wait for her to get back. “What if the doctors have to break them all over again and reset them?”  


“Eh,” Eren says, unconcerned. “It’s Mikasa, isn’t it? If she said she’s fine, she probably is.”  


The thing that set Mikasa apart from most average teenagers, Armin thinks, was her ability to get other people to believe in her own invulnerability, too. He sighs.  


“Hey,” Eren says to him, gently. “Are _you_ okay? Because you’re a lot more worried about this than you normally would be.”  


“I’m fine!” Armin says, so quickly and so brightly that it can’t be anything but a lie. There is a long, dragging pause, during which he gives up on dignity and just buries his face in his knees.  


The truth is, aggressively caring that Mikasa is injured is a good way to pretend he isn’t jealous of her over something she isn’t responsible for and never even wanted. It is a good thing Armin’s never thought of himself as a good person, because the way he’s been acting lately would definitely prove him wrong on that count.  


“Okay,” Eren says, in the end.  


Armin lifts his face. “Really? That’s it?”  


“If you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to.” Eren leans against him, plopping his head atop Armin’s and rubbing his chin into Armin’s hair the way he’s done since they were little. They’ve never had much in the way of personal space. Armin sighs, comforted a little despite himself.  


“Thank you,” he says. “But I _am_ worried about Mikasa, you know. She’s being reckless.”  


“There’s really nothing to worry about.” Eren assures him. “She’s almost healed up, I promise!”  


“How can you promise that?” Armin frowns at him. “Mikasa would tell you she was almost healed even if she were dying; she wouldn’t want you to worry.”  


“Er,” says Eren, caught. His eyes immediately start shifting, looking for an escape.  


Armin frowns. “What is it?”  


“I can feel it,” Eren offers, after a long pause. “You know. Through the soulmate bond, or whatever.”  


“You… can do that?” Armin asks, and then, “You can do that.”  


“Yeah,” says Eren, looking tremendously uncomfortable. “Most people can.”  


“Most people?”  


“Pretty much everyone.” Eren says. “Um. Everyone with a soulmate.”  


“Why didn’t I know?” Armin demands, and then looks at Eren’s face. “Oh.”  


“Because we didn’t say anything,” Eren insists.  


“Because I didn’t want to know.” Armin snaps back, furious at himself.  


“Armin,” Eren says, and Armin doesn’t fucking understand why people keep talking to him with that pleading note in their voices.  


“Don’t.” he says flatly.  


“Armin,” Eren says again, and Armin pulls away from him and walks away, because he can’t bear it. He can’t bear it. He’s only useful for one thing, really. And if he can’t do that, then what use is he?  


Eren yells after him, but he ignores it, mind furiously working over the new information, and his heart- well, his heart just hurts.  


* * *

He’s ashamed, later, to admit that he’d forgotten entirely about Mikasa in the aftermath of that revelation, and so it takes him a few more days to realize that there’s something wrong.  


But there _is_ something wrong. Mikasa’s eyes are distracted, not the clear grey that they are most days, most fights. Armin’s been staying away from her, caught up in his own idiotic jealousy, but now that he pays closer attention he can see signs of anxiety and unhappiness in the lines of her face, imperceptible to anyone but himself and Eren, and perhaps, these days, Sasha.  


They’re changing, the three of them, the circle opening wider, allowing people in, and strange as it feels, some days, Armin doesn’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Still, that’s not what he should be focusing on, and he shakes away his sudden introspective mood, puts aside all his unwarranted resentment, and goes to find his friend. It turns out that she’s about to go on watch with Jean. Armin does not feel a pang of jealousy. Really.  


“I’ll cover your shift this time round,” he says to Jean quietly, not offering an explanation. Jean looks at him for a brief second, nods, and then walks away. A warmth immediately spreads through him at Jean’s understanding; Armin pushes it away, but it lingers anyway. He gestures to Mikasa, who’s been watching this exchange with an intensity that is slightly unnerving, and they both silently head out.  


It’s an incredibly dreary day, the skies having been drizzling rain all morning and afternoon. The ground under their feet is slick mud, and their boots are going to be a pain to scrub off, later. Armin lets Mikasa climb up the ladder to the lookout post and follows to find her settling across from him. He takes the other corner and they stare out into the dark forest for a while in silence.  


“What’s going on?” he asks finally. She stares at him for a long moment, looking younger than he could ever remember her looking.  


“I couldn’t save him,” she murmurs, almost to herself. “I’ve always- but I couldn’t save him, or you, or anyone. I can’t save anyone.”  


Her chin trembles then, dangerously, and Armin is suddenly sick and tired of everyone around him thinking they’re not good enough.  


“Mikasa,” he says firmly. Controlled, although he doesn’t want to be. “Listen to me.”  


Mikasa turns to stare at him.  


“I don’t believe in heroes,” he tells her. “I’ve never- _never_ -” He sucks in a breath, hard. – “But if I did. If I did, Mikasa. It would be you.”  


“Not because you never make the wrong choice,” he tells her, as her eyes meet his, fierce and sure in a way he practically never is. “But because I trust you even if you do.”  


Mikasa is silent for a long moment, just staring at him in surprise. Then she nods, and takes his hand, squeezing it tight.  


“Thank you,” she says, earnest. Armin doesn’t know how to reply, so he just kisses her on her cheek and then draws back abruptly, a little bit surprised at himself. She beams back at him though, so he supposes he’s done something right.  


Armin doesn’t know it yet, but he will smile every time he recounts this moment, even though neither of them ever speak of it again.  


“So, about you and Jean,” she adds, eyes glinting with mischief, and Armin nearly slips on the slick wooden planks of their lookout post. He makes a sound somewhere between a squawk and a yelp.  


Mikasa laughs and steadies him, then spends the rest of their shift smirking at him. Armin lets her; no one can say she hasn’t earned the right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the comments and kudos! This story is definitely going to be finished, it's just a matter of when. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

**Author's Note:**

> Goes AU around chapter 70.  
> Don't expect frequent updates on account of I suck.


End file.
